


teenage dirtbags

by rawquelicious



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: AU where Jughead goes to Southside High much earlier, Alternate Universe - Punk, Bisexual Toni Topaz, But he doesn't become a Serpent, F/M, Friendship, Gen, True Crime Club of two, answer: they are not, archie is a poser with a good heart, because they are the dumbest gang ever tbh, betty over identifies with 2007 britney, he's also a dick, jughead is punk, toni topaz is a national treasure, why are josie and the pussycats the only band in town?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-02-01 11:57:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12704526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rawquelicious/pseuds/rawquelicious
Summary: It was Jughead who started the punk scene in Riverdale, and he will not let you forget it.The one where they were a band who broke up over irreconcilable artistic differences like Jughead moving schools, and finding people who understand him. Or, the one where he and Betty have a True Crime Club way before it was cool to die in Riverdale.Or, the one where Betty is the most punk.





	1. Captain Trash is dead, long live Captain Trash

**Author's Note:**

> English is my second language, and also this is unbeta-ed and written in a fever dream weekend. I'm sorry for any mistakes, but I do hope you enjoy this.
> 
> It does get better.

It was Jughead who started the punk scene in Riverdale, and he will not let you forget it.

Sometimes, Archie argues that the Southside Serpents actually started the punk scene, because they have an inherently anti-society behavior and that is most punk, but then they get in a discussion about politics and inevitably Jughead ends up screaming about the little fact that no serpent actually makes music.

(In fact, there is an healthy DJing and hip-hop community in the Southside, but none of them know that because they never asked)

(Jughead only finds out about Southside music when Toni casually brings him a mixtape to listen to)

(There’s something called Reggaetton in it, it scars him for life)

So, the punk scene in Riverdale started one fateful summer, when they were all 13(thirteen) and hormones still hadn’t ruined all of their lives. Archie had hit a tentative, baby-deer-like sort of puberty, growing 5 inches and a wispy red moustache during that summer, but even he was still awkward, his arms and legs growing faster than the rest of him. They were stuck between childhood, and something else. It was the summer before they all realized that Betty was a girl, and therefore a different species from themselves. Those days, they still splashed in Sweetwater River in their underwear with no shame, and explored the forest all day long, going home smelling like clean sweat and maple syrup.

Years later, Forsythe Jones would write the New York Times bestseller true crime novel, “Thick as syrup”, lauded for its depiction of an idyllic childhood just as it grows bitter.

One memorable week that summer, Mr. Andrews had helped them build a tree house, and set it up with his old record player that still worked if you had a vinyl record to put in it. At first they just played Mr. Andrews’ records, god bless his soul, it included a lot of Bruce Springsteen, Dire Straits, some Rolling Stones, and a lot of Oldies compilations. There was even a Prince record that had made Fred Andrews grow all misty eyed and start a story that sounded like it tied the Archie Andrews Origin Story with Price’s iconic “Kiss”.

All that had been fine and dandy. They had kept the tree house as a boys’ club for exactly a week before Betty kicked both of their butts and made herself at home by going through their meager record collection.

Then, declaring them idiots, she brought her dad’s Beatles albums, and they all listened in quiet silence to the White Album incessantly for the first few days. They had a routine down: in the morning, Betty would have breakfast with her family and then leave with 3(three) sandwiches wrapped in brown paper, and always something like muffins, or cake. She would help Archie finish his summer school homework, and then they would go over to wake Jughead up with some food, and get ready to go to the forest play their favourite game, Exploring. They were getting sort of old for it, but it was nice to walk around aimlessly, with the heat making sweat pools in their skin until they got to the river and swam till they were tired and drip dried on a rock, eating Betty’s baked goods. In the afternoon, they would go to the tree house, and they would play The White Album on repeat, Betty reading a book, Jughead writing one, and Archie dozing off, daydreaming about being Paul McCartney. He didn’t tell either of them, but he thought that Betty would be the John Lennon of the group, and even though Jughead played the drums later, he would still be George Harrison.  

“You know, this is the album that Charles Manson used to convince people to murder Sharon Tate and her baby.”

Had said Jughead one day while they were listening to “Helter Skelter”, his new favourite song. Jughead had always been the one among them who was fascinated by darkness. This made him terrible at sleepovers, but great at playing Ghosts and making up horror stories that made Betty squeal with glee and fake terror. But this time, this one comment ended with both Jughead and Betty reading to the point of obsession about the Manson murders, until they put up a murder board on the tree house and Archie officially put an end to the True Crime Club.

(Years later, the True Crime Club would be reborn when Jason Blossom was killed)

That was the summer of FP’s endless business ventures, when he was still trying to make it work but getting more erratic by the day. There were no serpents yet, but they were starting to cast a long shadow in the blazing heat of summer’s sunset. Before the sunset, FP bought a storage unit on auction. For a business venture based on a reality show, it worked out better than most. FP had gotten 200 dollars profit from selling a washer and dryer, and Jughead had gotten a collection of original punk rock records, and a leather jacket.

Monday he arrived at the tree house looking like a fifties greaser who had shrunk in the wash, and brought with him salvation.

Salvation meaning, The Clash.

Later, Sex Pistols and Dead Kennedys, and The Misfits and New York Dolls and too long a time listening to The Ramones. The punk record collection held fascinating secrets to them, a world where everyone cursed all the time and you didn’t have to be a craftsman musician just to have something to say. The three of them dived deep into punk. Betty discovered Patti Smith and an embarrassing crush on Nick Cave, which Jughead never told her he shared. And Archie, deep down, would always prefer the all-american blue-collar rock of Bruce Springsteen but in the wake of his parents divorce, he also wanted to be Joey Ramone.

(even though Joey was the worst, the absolute worst)

The thing is, they were 13 and stupid but god they were also all so angry. It seemed like it was centuries before(two weeks) that they would listen to “The White Album” in silence, now they screamed with the records, and they trashed the tree house and played air guitar and made fools of themselves.

They were just kids.

Archie’s birthday was right in the middle of summer, middle of July when the sun was highest. He had a small birthday party, just Betty and Jughead. His mother had everything packed, she would leave the next morning.

But when it came time to open the presents, Fred Andrews, bless his heart, opened the garage and there was sitting a drum set, and a guitar, and a _bass_. Not without embarrassment, Archie’s dad confessed to his teenager days of being in a rock’n’roll band, and how he had cleaned and fixed up their old stuff so they could “do all that ruckus in the garage for god’s sake, the neighbors have been complaining about the tree house Archie”.

That day, Captain Trash was born.

* * *

 

Captain Trash was composed of Forsythe “Jughead” Jones III (the third) on the drums, Elizabeth “Betty” Cooper on the bass, and Archibald “Archie” Andrews on the guitar and lead vocals.

They were terrible.

They were amazing.

This was better than playing Exploring, Ghosts, Imagination, or Gremlins. And they got good, too. Archie learned the guitar from his dad, Betty took to the bass easily after years of studying piano and violin (“really guys, most songs we’re doing are only like three cords”), and Jughead… Jughead was in love with the drums. It was an outlet for everything that was going on at home, for everything falling apart around him, for his own body betraying him everyday with its new proportions and whims. He watched Keith Moon videos, he watched Metallica concerts, he did embarrassing stuff like trying tricks with the sticks and kicked his kit twice before Archie told him off, they couldn’t be that punk with his dad’s stuff.

Jughead’s arms ached all the time, and by the end of that summer he was almost as tall and lanky as Archie, and sometimes he’d hit something particularly sick in the drums and Betty would smile at _him_. 

* * *

 

Archie Andrews was put on this earth to be a leading man. God knows he has the jaw for it, and he also has the abs, the temperament, the vocals and even the guitar. What he lacks, is punk rock. Jughead Jones, on the other hand, is as punk as it gets, and even though the drummer is supposed to be heard and not seen, Jughead refuses to be ignored, and instead he’s an explosion of rage behind the drum kit, beating everything into submission and screaming the lyrics along with Archie.

“Archibald, melody is not punk rock.”

“Well, Jughead, I’m not about to go out there and sound like shit in favour of being cool.”

The other problem with Captain Trash, is that Betty quits the band the summer before they start high school, without any consideration for the fact that she’s the glue that keeps them together, and also their bass player.

“Guys just don’t be mad, it’s because we’re going to have a way bigger workload now that we’re starting high school and I don’t wanna fall behind.” She keeps twisting the hem of her dusty pink shirt while she talks to them, and she avoids their eyes, “My mom says that things will get way harsher this year, and if I’m joining the cheerleading squad and keeping my grades, there is no way I can keep going with the band.”

She doesn’t say “How will I put a band called Captain Trash in my college applications?”, she doesn’t say “My mom said I shouldn’t talk to you anymore”.

All this summer they’ve been playing at adulthood, and this is like the final exam. They all pretended like they were disappointed and that it was for the best, really, that things wouldn’t change between them. Jughead would spend years torturing himself, asking himself if they pretended to not see the wounds on Betty’s hands as well.

She had spent the summer in boy shorts, old white tshirts, and jean cutoffs, but now she was in a prim sweater and dark wash jeans. They had seen her less and less this summer, as she was eaten away by dance lessons and summer tutoring(even though she was always the best student in their class) and, in a particularly mortifying day, they had come over to her house only to hear Alice Cooper tell them that Betty couldn’t go play because she was _cramping_ (Jughead almost asks if it’s her bass hand that is cramping, before the implication dawns on him) . Without them noticing, change had happened.

It would haunt Jughead later that while this first step of losing Betty was happening right in front of them, Archie and him didn’t even fight it. Instead, all they did was argue what would happen to Captain Trash.

“I mean, guys” said Betty, always the wisest, “You can just be a duo, I mean, look at The White Stripes. I would totally say that you are weird incest brothers.”

Jughead sighed and adjusted his beanie. That wouldn’t work at all, they don’t look anything alike and have no complementary color scheme. But he still said,

“Thanks Betty, that’s pretty punk of you.”

* * *

 

Everything changed, after that. 

* * *

 

“Please don’t make me feel shitty about this, Jughead” - Archie says, like the backstabbing liar that he is - “It’s just, punk was always more your thing, you know. You and Betty, you guys always liked the screaming better than me. I was just trying to make you guys happy, but I’m not punk rock. I’ve always been a Johnny Cash guy at heart.”

“I’ll let you know, you bloody traitor, that Johnny Cash was punk as fuck.” Jughead says, jaw clenched, shoulders hunched and arms crossed. He’s pissed. “How can you do this to me right now? First we loose Betty, there goes our bass and sex appeal, and now you’re telling me that you wanna go solo? You don’t understand Archie, this is punk but pretty people are still a plus. I don’t wanna be a fucking poser, but do you think I’ll get anywhere with my looks? And the drums aren’t a solo instrument, Archie, I can’t do it on my own. I’m not Patti fucking Smith.”

“Oh, and who is, Juggie? Really?” Archie said, throwing his hands in the air in despair and not because he didn’t care. Then he rubbed the back of his neck, and continued apologetically, “It’s just like Betty said, we need to figure ourselves out without each other. We’re… Codependent. And don’t say it’s not like that, you know it is. We have eaten every dinner out of the same plate since we were nine. Hell, since Betty has been busy we still haven’t figured out where we buried our haunted copy of Gremlins, and we need to check the ghost activity.”

“We should never have trusted her. She’s a _girl_.” Weirdly, at 14 ½ (fourteen and a half), that doesn’t sound like much of an insult, instead more like an inside joke that neither of them thinks it’s really funny anymore. Just like this, they have discovered irony.

Archie is right, and that’s why Jughead doesn’t tell him that Captain Trash is the only thing keeping him afloat these days. That there is a pressure on him that makes him wake up in the middle of the night, suffocating, gasping for air. The fights at home are getting worse, his dad is never there and Jellybean’s asthma and allergies are worse than ever, and yesterday he woke up to his parents arguing(again), and heard something about losing the house. About losing everything.

He doesn’t say any of that to Archie. They’re barely men, but all through this summer they have been tentatively finding out what that means. They don’t crash on the same bed anymore, and they don’t talk about their feelings, and they don’t share lyrics they write until they are absolutely sure that there’s nothing embarrassing in them. So, as Captain Trash break up, Jughead claps his best friend on the back and says,

“It’s okay man. I’m just glad I got to be a part of your musical education. I fear like if we hadn’t gotten to you on time, you’d be turning into a singer songwriter douchebag and you’d think Green Day are fine.”

“They’re not that awful and you know it.” Archie says, laughing and punching him in the shoulder, and just like that everything has changed, and everything has stayed the same.

* * *

 

In one of those waning days of summer, Jughead wakes up and finds that his mom and Jellybean are gone. She ran away, and she didn’t take him.

There’s a letter for him, hanging from a magnet in the fridge, it says:

_I’m so sorry Juggie, I couldn’t take it anymore._

_I know you’ll never forgive me, but I couldn’t take you both away from your father. Please keep an eye on him, you’re always going to be my special little helper._

(there are water stains in the ink here)

_As soon as I get everything together, I’ll send for you._

_I’ll always love you,_

_Mom_

_(P.S: There’s lasagne in the fridge, please eat it till the end of the week)_

Without his mom or Jellybean, there’s no reason for them to keep the two-bedroom house in the same street as Archie and Betty. His father lets it foreclose (couldn’t he even stay sober enough time to sell it? These days, Jughead gets angrier and angrier).

They move to the trailer. At dinner, between mouthfuls of reheated lasagne, his dad says:

“You know, Southside High is a lot closer to us now. And a lot of my friend’s kids go there, maybe it would be good for you, Jug. It will teach you something about our place in the world.”

His place, it turns out, is nowhere close to Archie and Betty. It appears that his life so far was just a cruel joke, one of those YouTube videos about dogs adopting baby tigers whose mother has been killed. You are happy because they are safe, but one of those things is not like the others, and it will always need to be back where it belongs.

The knowledge of this truth is what carries Jughead through his first day in Southside High.  

And the most terrifying thing is, he likes it.

It seems like everyone in Southside has discovered irony long before he and Archie did, and all of them walk around like extras on Outsiders. There are still popular girls but they all wear a lot more makeup than Jughead is used to, and they are always ready for a fight as soon as they can get their hoop earrings off and their hair up. There are still jocks, and even though they are a lot bigger than most jocks at Riverdale High, they are also more subdued. Most of them are kids from complicated families, and the football team is not just a way to get girls drunk and defy the meaning of consent. Football here is a way out.

To Jughead’s eternal delight, there’s a lot more weirdos that there ever were at Riverdale High. He doesn’t mean to do it, but he finds his people in Southside. Kids who dress all in black and talk about the inevitability of death, yes, but also stoners and misfits of all kinds, all sorts of kids whose jagged pieces fit perfectly with his. He can make jokes about serial killers, and at least one person always laughs, instead of just having to make them when Betty is there(and then dealing with her shame at making fun of murder even though she loves it). He can show his writing to the girls who write poetry about Gerard Way’s eyes, and they give him constructive criticism on metaphors and overbearing narrative voices. He pays back by telling them that the simile between Gerard’s eyes and a storm will work even better if they add a part about drowning and a bit of Norse mythology. After his first week in Southside High, he feels like he can breathe, finally.

He and Archie and Betty never actually decide to stop being friends. Those first few weekends, they still hang out and play video games, like nothing changed. But they are slowly moving apart, and soon Archie is in the football team in Riverdale High, and he hasn’t seen Betty in weeks because she’s practicing for a dance recital, and their group chat lays mute on his phone. It’s the way of dying friendships.

What about Jughead? Well, he meets Toni Topaz, and she sort of saves his life.


	2. The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jughead meets and falls in friendship with Toni Topaz, finds out he doesn't mind parties, and shots are fired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The references to Tupac is this chapter, and some of its themes, are in part inspired by the wonderful novel "The Hate U Give", that you should go read right now.  
> I hope you don't completely hate this chapter focusing more on Toni and the other Southside kids. I promise that next chapter will be all about our fave Hitchcock blonde.

The first time Jughead sees her, he’s sitting with the goth kids at lunch and they are talking about what would be the best way to die (burning or freezing? Hanging or pills? It’s the subject that never stops giving), when the coolest girl he’s ever seen just walks over and sits at their table.

(Years later, as an adult, he would wonder why they were all so obsessed with death)

She has dark skin and one of the sides of her head is shaved while the other is braided so that at the top of her head stands an honest-to-god mohawk, dyed pink. She is wearing a denim jacket dyed purple and just overflowing with patches and pins, and her skinny black jeans are tucked into purple, glittery, motorcycle boots. Jughead looks at her, mouth agape, wondering whether he wants to date her or to be her. He never felt so confused in his life, and then he realizes that he’s been staring because she looks at him and growls,

“What?”

“Wha-What?”

“What what, what?” She asks mockingly before turning to Leti, sitting beside him, and stealing a fry from her plate, “Why is weird white boy looking at me? Are we officially sitting with the special needs kids now?”

Leti swats her hand, trying to protect her food, and certainly does not giggle while looking at the sad sight of embarrassed Jughead, giggling is not goth at all. “Toni, this is Jughead, he’s new. Jughead, meet Toni Topaz. She’s older and therefore closer to death than we will ever be.”

“Oh, fuck off Leticia.”

“Also, that was sort of ableist.”

Toni growled, “You need to get off that damn website.”

“Is that a Black Flag shirt?” Jughead manages to say, even though his voice sounds weird and he is immersed in a foreign feeling to him. Her tshirt is clearly diy, with four thick black lines painted on the white fabric. He realizes that he feels the need to impress this girl. This never happened before.

“No, it’s a Toni Topaz shirt as a tribute to Black Flag. You nerds actually found someone who has heard of real music, color me surprised.” Toni smiles, and Leti rolls her eyes but doesn’t argue. Jughead doesn’t argue either because even though he sort of loves Morrissey, he was not born for gothness. “Tell me, Jughead, at what point did you stop your education?”

He spends the rest of the lunch hour shoulder pressed to hers as she shows him song after song on her iPod classic (the one with the clicky wheel, a few years old but still better than the fucking bullet mp3 that Jughead has), one earphone for him and one for her, and he feels like after years of pretending to be a dog, he found another tiger just like him.

* * *

 

This is still during the warm dying days of his friendship with Archie. Jughead still goes to his house on Friday, like he always does. He wants to tell Archie everything about Toni, how cool she is, how she does not give a fuck, how she’s not afraid of anybody, how she has fucking _tattoos_ (okay, one stick and poke saying NO on her middle finger) and a _girlfriend_ , and he wants to show Archie all the new music that Toni showed him.

He listened to Tupac for the first time today, and then X-Ray Spex and Beth Ditto and Mykki Blanco, and he needs to sit in the dark with his best friend and somehow make sense of this brave new world opening for him. He feels too big for his skin when he walks right in Archie’s garage, not waiting to be invited in.

To his surprise, Betty is there. This is increasingly rare, but there she is sitting on the edge of the couch and looking at Archie in such a way that Jughead’s breath is knocked out of him. She is wearing one of her endless collared shirts, and a light blue sweater on top. Her hair is pulled tight on a impecable ponytail (her ponytails before had always been half-arsed, with fly away hairs and, during one summer, a terrible fringe) and the sun that is shining on Archie, making him look like a flaming marble statue of Mars, still reflects enough to shine golden on Betty’s face making her supernaturally beautiful. Jughead realizes with horror that Betty is wearing lipgloss, he can see the light reflecting on it when she bites down on her bottom lip, as Archie launches into the chorus of whatever song it is he is playing her. God, Jughead would give anything for her to look at him like that.

He almost needs to throw up when that thought enters his mind. Instead, he officially interrupts them, saying something dumb like:

“Please kill me Archibald, is that soft rock? Are you becoming a nineties guitar solo act?” he sits down next to Betty, tries to act casual. Where did he usually put his arms when he was sitting next to her? What did he do with his hands? Had he really spent all of his life sitting next to Betty Cooper without being painfully conscious of his every movement?

“Don’t tease Juggie, Archie was showing me his new songs. They’re very good! A lot better, from what I recall, than ‘Buggers for breakfast’”, Betty says, smiling at him like this is all normal and she wasn’t just looking at Archie like he hung the moon.

“I’ll let you know that ‘Buggers for Breakfast’ was a masterpiece that came before its time”, Jughead says automatically, leaning backwards and putting his arm on the back of the couch like he is super casual and cool. Yep, that’s how he usually acts. This is fine. He gestures for Archie to continue.

Bless his ginger heart, Archie smiles a dimpled smile at them before resuming the strumming on his guitar. Jughead thinks he can actually hear Betty swoon. Christ. Gone is the last of punk rock from Archie’s style, and instead he plays them a slow song, with simple and repetitive lyrics about falling in love with someone new.

“It’s not bad, if you don’t mind being an absolutely boring sentimental dick who writes for Coldplay”, oh shit did he say that out loud? Betty is looking at him with mouth slack with shock, and Archie looks like a kicked puppy. Jughead laughs nervously, he didn’t mean to sound so cutting. “I mean, Archie, you’re not serious, right?”

“God Jughead, must you always be such a pretentious douchebag?”, Betty turns to him with rage in her eyes and he is honestly confused before she continues without even looking at him anymore, “I think it’s very nice, and that Archie is being very brave exposing his feelings like that”.

“Betty, it’s okay… I mean, Jug is probably right. It’s kind of trash.” He rubs his red hair, looking dejected and embarrassed and not like the teenage heartthrob that Jughead had glimpsed when he walked him. He feels a sort of dark, dirty satisfaction at seeing that, like Jughead took him down a peg.

Then he realizes that Betty is right, he is a pretentious douchebag. He is just like his dad.

“I-I’m sorry.” The words sound weird tumbling out of his mouth, but Betty stops looking at him with pursed lips and cold eyes, and smiles with encouragement as he continues “You’re becoming the leading man you should always been, Archie. I’m sort of… Proud?”

“Ugh that sounded even more insulting Jughead, please stop trying to be nice”, and even though Archie is smiling now, he puts his guitar aside and gets up. “Come on, I want to go kick your ass on Call of Duty. Betts, are you staying? You can play whoever wins first round.”

Betty smiles but she still looks sad, and Jughead knows that this talk isn’t over. He wants to tell Archie to keep playing, but he felt left out and jealous and ugly when he did, and this leaves him without knowing where to step, like their easy friendship is now muddled waters. Betty gets up from the couch and straightens imaginary creases in her sweater before smiling happily at both of them.

“Sorry guys, but my mom is waiting for me for dinner. You know how Polly is these days, there can only be one rebellious teenager at a time.” She picks up her stuff and is already leaving the garage when she turns back and smiles only at Archie “I really liked your new stuff Archie, you can always call me to hear you play me some more, okay?”

Archie’s smile is like the sun, as he says sure, he will, before grabbing Jughead by the shoulders and trying to shit talk him about Call of Duty. Jughead has issues addressing his feelings, but he loves Archie at this moment, for being a bro and not making him apologize for being a dick. But two rounds of Call of Duty and one large pizza are still not enough to make him forget that Betty had not said goodbye to him, only to the red-haired singer-songwriter Abercrombie model that his best friend has turned into all of a sudden.

* * *

 

 

He decides not to go to Archie’s on saturday, after all that weirdness. It has taken a few weeks of living without a mother, but Jughead has finally figured out a laundry schedule and he’s sticking to it when he receives the text. He’s sitting in the laundromat with his laptop, writing a detective’s tale with an Hitchcock blonde femme fatale, when his phone vibrates itself into a suicide jump off the table. The only people who text him are mad at him at this moment (he thinks, it’s hard to tell with Archie), so for a moment his heart is in his throat as he thinks “it’s mom”.

It’s not.

_devon’s having a party today, come wit_

The text message says, without any other identification or greeting, and he doesn’t have this number saved, so he cautiously replies:

_Who is us? Also, I think you’re confused because this is Jughead Jones and Devon doesn’t know I exist_

He places the phone on the table again, sure that this is a misunderstanding. Even after only a couple of weeks in Southside High, he knows which of the three Devon’s is the one mentioned on the text. He’s the massive quarterback of the football team, the one whose dad is apparently a big fucking deal in the Southside. Sometimes, Jughead notices guys in Serpents gear going to shake hands with Devon, paying their respects. But not even 30 seconds after putting his phone down and it’s vibrating again, in quick succession:

_r u trying to be cute with ur punctuation and capitalization bougie pig?_

_it’s toni btw_

_in case ur still bein dumb_

Now he smiles and fires back,

_Good grammar and a regard for the authority of capitalism will take you places where punk cannot, Topaz._

_we must fight to topple societal structures that aim to control cultures that create their own language rules by making them believe to be inferior. this is the only way to create an anarchist marxist utopia jones_

He is in the middle of writing a very complex reply he hopes will make Toni laugh when his phone vibrates again,

_fuck that shit just come to fucking devon’s party okay im trying to make you cool_

_we pickin u up at 9_

* * *

 

“We” ends up being Toni, Leticia, that small asian guy with the glasses and the hatred in his heart (Dilton, Jughead’s brain eventually supplies), and Alysha, Toni’s famous “older than us, really mature” girlfriend. Toni looks like she always does, coolness incarnate even though she’s rocking her purple boots with a purple jumpsuit with a NASA patch on the left breast. But ever since Toni told him about her older girlfriend, Jughead never imagined she would look like the girl tucked under Toni’s arm. Alysha looks like she came from another universe, one where manicures are obligatory and you can never have too many hair pieces. She is wearing skin tight jeans that show off her curves, and a short hoodie that is unzipped to make sure that both her cleavage and toned belly are on display. It’s like her bellybutton piercing is so powerful that it makes Jughead forget his words. Instead he looks at Leticia with panic in his eyes, begging for an easy way out. But of course, Toni notices him and cuts immediately:

“Baby, this is Jughead. He’s from rich people land and he’s not used to all this melanin beauty, so you must forgive him for staring at people all the time.”

Alysha briefly looks up from her phone to give him a look, and he understands what insects feel like just before they are squashed.

“Yeah I guess. Hi. Babe, I’m bored let’s just go to this stupid party.”

Jughead tumbles out of the trailer just as Toni and Alysha start walking with a flick of the shorter girl’s hair. Now that the couple is walking ahead and out of earshot, he can turn at Leticia and ask:

“Is this really Alysha?” he mouths the What The Fuck, afraid that Toni will hear them gossiping and be angry.

“Yeah, that is the queen bitch of Topaz’ heart”, Dilton replies instead of Leti in a voice that somehow convenes all the boredom he feels at life. Jughead respects the man. “We also don’t understand.”

Leti’s shoulders are squared under her black hoodie, and her dark, kohl lined eyes are narrowed looking at the couple’s back, but after a moment she just sighs and kicks a rock.

“Don’t be dicks. Come one, let’s check how these people face up at the despair that is life.”

* * *

 

It turns out, partying is fun. Who knew? Not Jughead Jones, that’s for sure.

Devon doesn’t live in the trailer park, but his house is close enough that they just walk there through streets that look like they’ve seen better days. It’s still warm out, a really nice night, and they can hear Devon’s house before they turn a corner and see it. His house is modest, nowhere near as big as Archie’s, Betty’s, or even Jughead’s old home, but there is a Cadillac parked in his driveway, and even though it’s early there’s already people out in the porch, drinking and laughing and smoking weed. Jughead can’t tell what exactly is the music playing inside because the melody and lyrics are swallowed by the thick beat of the bass. Like molasses, it makes everything sticky and hot.

The minute they go in the house, Toni and Alysha are making out in a corner and Jughead catches Leti rolling her eyes before shoving him and Dilton into the kitchen, mumbling darkly “let’s get a fucking drink, I don’t need these many braincells”. Jughead always thought he would hate these sort of parties, with everyone sweaty and rubbing against each other, but one thing he has learned so far in the Southside is to keep an open mind. There is also a small voice in the back of his brain that reminds him that, without the built-in buffer that his friendship with Archie and Betty put between himself and the world, he is truly alone for the first time in his life. And he finds himself wanting people to like him, not everyone, but at least someone who will look at his face everyday and not be simply indifferent to him.

So he takes the red cup that Leti hands him, drinks from it, and actually sort of enjoys the music, rap songs filled with catchy beats and angry plays on words. Dilton is a surprisingly good company, and the three of them hang out in the kitchen for a bit, nursing beers and talking about Vonnegut. Jughead feels very grown up, and, like, cool, right up until the moment when Leti downs her drink and says “I’m ready for the dancefloor” with a seriously scary look on her face.

There are some people going crazy with the dance moves and almost playing chicken with their genitals, seeing who comes closer to actual fucking without actually fucking. But there are also people who just seem to be having fun and trying to be cool and that’s definitely their little groups’ comfort zone. Leticia seems to think that dancing is all about screaming the lyrics and interpretative movements, while Dilton mostly sways a bit and looks bored. Against his best judgement, and maybe because of all that beer, Jughead starts having fun and actually moving up and down to the rhythm and putting his hands in the air like he just doesn’t care. It’s easy to let himself go and be like this next to Leti, who is a chaotic extra-limbed goth wonder and who doesn’t know him since he was waddling around in diapers. These people have no expectations of who Jughead is.

(Which is, someone who doesn’t have fun at parties)

On the corner of his eye, he can see that Toni and Alysha are no longer passionately making out, but instead seem be fighting with the same enthusiasm. He is about to turn to Leti and ask her if they should do something about it when he spots Archie and Betty walking over to where Devon is presiding over the party, next to the DJ.

At least that’s what his addled brain sees at first, but then he looks again and does that thing where you shake your head like a dog, and t’s not Archie and Betty at all but instead their darkest timeline versions.

Jason Blossom and Polly Cooper.

What the fuck are they doing in a party like this?

Leti is about to show him how you whip or nae nae, but Jughead excuses himself from the proceedings mumbling something about finding a bathroom. Instead, he follows the redhead and the blonde until he is close enough to smell Polly’s overbearing sweet perfume (Victoria’s Secret’s Bombshell). He feels slightly dizzy, and he’s not sure what he’s going for when he grabs Polly’s wrist and she turns to look at him, shocked and kind of…

Scared?

“Polly, what are you doing here?”, Jughead feels stupid even asking, leaning close to her so he doesn’t have to scream above the music. “Is that Jason Blossom?”

Behind Polly, he can see Jason fist-bumping Devon, and then doing that bro-hug thing with a guy Jughead has seen around the school a couple times. The same guy who always wears his leather jacket with a Serpents patch, and who always slicks his hair back. It’s like he’s advertising “Bad News” in all neon, all caps. Jason Blossom, who Jughead knows in the same way that you know about Hollywood A-listers, is wearing his varsity jacket and has never looked more aristocratic or out of place in his life. Is this a case of rich people slumming? Jughead forces himself to focus back on Polly, who is looking at him with eyes wide like saucers.

“Jughead, you can’t tell Betty you saw us here. Please.” Polly pulls him closer and he feels her warm breath in his ear, “I’ll explain, I promise, but please don’t tell her.”

Before he can reply, Jason Blossom and the Serpent have stopped talking and are now looking at him, white faces shining every time the lights flash to the beat.

Then, a lot of things happen at the same time.

The Serpent Greaser yells out, “Yo, aren’t you FP’s kid?”

There are gunshot noises outside.

For a moment, Jughead thinks they are part of the music, but after the gunshots there is screaming, and suddenly someone is grabbing him by the arm and hauling him away through the crowd. Toni Topaz, not the hero he needs and not even the one he deserves, keeps pushing him until they are outside and running like their lives depend on it. All around he hears people screaming “The police is coming!” and he runs, runs, runs, till his lungs burn and they no longer hear music. Toni slows down and bends to grab her knees, breathing harshly. Jughead does the same, and to his surprise finds himself throwing up, bile and food and beer coming up for revenge. His head is pounding and for a moment he’s afraid he’ll pass out and die on a puddle of his own sick, but then there is a cool hand on his forehead and Toni is rubbing comforting circles on his back.

“Sh, shh, there you go boy, get it all out.”

When he is finally empty, Jughead straightens up, checks if his crown beanie is still on, and accepts gratefully the bottle of water that Toni shoves at him. He has no words, feels awkward and embarrassingly realizes he’s like 40 seconds away from crying. Then Toni puts her arm around him, half hugs him even though he must smell, rubs his shoulders and says,

“Come on dude, you’re staying at chez Toni today. Maybe we’ll find some waflles.”

“What about Alysha? Should we… Should we go back to get her?”

Toni sighs at that, and takes her arm off his shoulder just to interlock it with his and start the slow walk to her house, “Nah, she left before all the mess. Devon’s her cousin, that’s the only reason I went to this stupid party and she never even told me her ex would be there…”

“Are things… Okay… Between you guys?”, there’s nothing Jughead wants less than talking about feelings or relationships, but this girl just watched him throw his guts out and then offered him a place to sleep. He owes her.

(He always will)

“I… I’m the first girl she’s dating. Hell, she’s the first girl I’m dating too, but it’s not as much of a big deal, it was more of a matter of time.” Toni shakes her head, pink curls bouncing away from their mohawk formation. She is wearing a nose ring, even though Jughead has never seen her with it before, he thinks it looks good.

They walk in silence for two more blocks before he finds the guts to ask, “Do you think anyone got hurt tonight?”

Toni snorts, “No.” Then she thinks a bit more and looks at him with such kind eyes that he starts to feel nauseous again before she continues, “It was probably a stupid kid who thought he would act tough and got carried away.”

She opens the door to her house, a smaller version of Devon’s but a cleaner one. The night is just starting to get lighter around them, but Toni shrugs and says “my mom must already have left”. He doesn’t ask what her mom does, because the white crocs in the entryway and the blue scrubs hanging up to dry in the living room already tell him all he needs to know. A nurse. With the memory of Toni’s cool hand on his forehead, it makes sense.

Toni busies herself toasting waffles, then gives him a towel, a soft gray sweatshirt and old plaid pajama pants, scrunching her nose as she says “bathroom’s that way, you’re not sleeping with me smelling like that”. He showers quickly and feeling thankful, and definitely doesn’t think about how this is his first time sleeping with a girl. The sweater is soft and warm and the pants are a man’s large so they are slipping over his hipbones, but he’s comfortable. They eat their waffles in silence, while he was showering Toni did something to her face that makes her look younger and less sharp (later it dawns on him, this is the first time he sees her with no eyeliner). The NASA jumpsuit was abandoned in favor of a yellowing old white tshirt littered with holes, and sweatpants that say “Underrated” across the crotch. (“My brother”, she smiles ruefully when he points them out with a judgemental eyebrow).

There is an awkward moment when Toni gets in her double bed immediately and Jughead hovers for a minute before she pulls him down to lie next to her. He hasn’t slept with anyone since his mom and Jellybean left, he used to sleep with her like this when she had a rough night and trouble breathing. Filled with waffles and water, Jughead doesn’t feel nauseous anymore and his headache has calmed down, but even though he is tired he can’t sleep yet. Both of them stare at the low ceiling of Toni’s bedroom, where a poster of Tupac looks down on them. Then Toni, bless her heart, says,

“So, who were those white kids talking to Joaquin?”

And then words are coming out of him just like vomit one hour earlier. He tells Toni about Archie and Betty and their dying friendship, and he tells her about the way Betty was looking at Archie just the day before (god, it seems like it was years ago). He tells her about Polly being the more rebellious of the Cooper sisters, and how afraid he is that she’s gotten into some real bad shit. He tells her about the Serpent guy( _Joaquin_ ) who knew his father’s name, and how he doesn’t know where the money comes from at home and that terrifies him. Then, in an even smaller voice, he tells her about Captain Trash.

“It was the best thing I ever did Toni. And then it just went away.”

He feels empty when he’s done, and the silence between them stretches for what seems like a long time. Jughead is warm and comfy under the covers, and he’s starting to drift off when Toni breaks the silence, sounding smaller than he ever imagined she could.

“Do you know what Thug Life means?” Jughead rolls so he’s back on his back, looking at those words on Tupac’s stomach as Toni continues, “It means, The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody. My dad used to say that’s what happened to this place. When we are born we start drinking the hate along with milk, hate is the Serpents and the lack of funds in the school and kids fronting with guns like tonight. Hate is that fucking trailer park where you live, and then how we grow up and never amount to nothing and feed our kids the same shit.”

Jughead suddenly feels very stupid and young, so he just grabs Toni’s hand under the covers, in the darkness it seems like the right thing to do.

“Jug, we should start a band. I mean, I would like to start a band with you. I just. I feel so angry. All the time. I need to scream, and I want to scream with you.”

“That’s pretty punk, Toni”, he says softly, because it is, even though they’re two kids in high school, smelling like clean laundry and waffles and holding hands under the covers.

They talk about band names, and potential line-ups(“I do know how to play a guitar Jughead Jones, how hard can it be?”), and cover of songs they want to do, right until they drift away.

They fall asleep holding hands, and it’s not even that weird.


	3. Meet the Girl With the Most Cake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we read Betty Cooper's diary, a band gets named, secrets are traded and a body is found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I messed up the timeline (this is what happens when you write in a fugue state) and so had to fudge it a bit for this to work. In this AU, Jason disappeared in the first weeks of the school year, not in July, and everyone is a sophomore except for Polly, Jason and Toni, who are graduating (or not) by the end of this school year. I’m sorry about any previous mistakes and hope this makes everything more clear. As always, this is not betaed so please pity me.
> 
> Also, I’m trying to channel the teen experience, so please be kind to Betty. 
> 
> TW: This chapter includes mentions of disordered eating and self-harm.

From the diary of Betty Cooper (pink):

_Today was a GRAY day. Polly is still being weird about the weekend, and Archie hasn’t texted me since friday. He played me a new song, it wasn’t that good but it was sooo sweet, I wish it was about me. He looked cute with his guitar too, much better than when we made him play electric. He was so RED._

_I’m thinking about going to the cheerleader tryouts this year, even though Cheryl will probably say I’m too fat for it AGAIN. It’ll be even worse if she says I can do it and then I’ll actually have to cheer and wear that stupid uniform… How do you even do those moves with everyone watching? Bet it will make my legs look good though._

_Imagine Archie in his varsity jacket and me in a cheerleader uniform… I WOULD DIE._

_FAKE AND NOT GOOD, that’s what Jughead would say about that. He would say that I’m a REDACTED poser._

* * *

 

Betty Cooper wakes up everyday at 6am and goes for a run with her older sister.

When they get home, sweaty and feeling their pulse beating on their necks, they take short  showers(Polly first, then Betty), get dressed and go downstairs to eat the identical breakfasts their mother has ready for them.

(one piece of toast, unbuttered, half a grapefuit each, and hot bitter black tea)

They always pack their own lunch from whatever is lying around the fridge since their mom doesn’t actually cook (and when she does, it’s bland and almost inedible). Polly always takes less than Betty, even though they never talk about it, and if anyone suggested that there’s a terrible competition between the sisters, they would both be baffled by the thought.

Betty Cooper is the sort of person who keeps two separate diaries. One of them is a pretty pink thing, with a lock so that her mother has the satisfaction of picking it to read it. It has “Secrets” emblazoned in gold on the cover. She keeps it artfully arranged on top of her desk like it’s one of those rose-themed Instagram feeds. This is the diary that Betty writes for her mother’s sake, and it’s full of sweet nothings and half truths. She writes about essays that are due, and sprinkles just enough details about her crush on Archie Andrews so that it will still read true, it will still read like a secret. Like most of the careful aesthetic choices in her life, this diary is not one that carries much weight. It’s just one more of those things that Betty does for someone else.

Betty Cooper loves her mother. She does, and she would be offended and sad that you would think otherwise. She admires her mother’s spirit and stubbornness, and secretly feels that she is weak in comparison. She loves her mother’s guile and unrelenting cold intelligence. She loves her mother so much that when Alice changes the entire décor of Betty’s room as a surprise birthday gift, turning it into something bland and pink and utterly devoid of her, like a pretty room one would see on Pinterest and think, “ah, a teenage girl lives there”, well, then all that Betty says is “thank you mom, I love it”.

Another teenager would have screamed and rebelled. Instead, Betty listens to all her music on headphones and works on taking back her space in small details like the polaroids of her friends stuck to the mirror and the notebooks filled with collages that litter the shelves. All the things she loves she puts in a pretty pink package, unassuming for the naked eye.

God knows her sister sometimes can be “difficult”, her mother’s favourite euphemism, but not Betty. Betty is never difficult, until the day she passes out mid 6am run, hitting the floor before she can even admit that she’s been dizzy since she woke up.

(Polly never tells her this, but she runs for 5 more minutes before she realizes her sister fell behind, the pump up songs on her ears too loud, drowning Betty’s absence)

(The sisters always run in silence, each with their music, and Polly is always ahead)

To add to the mortification of actually being hospitalized, there are a lot of questions that Betty doesn’t want to answer, questions like:

“How much do you usually eat in day, Betty?”

“Do you consider yourself an over achiever?”

“Do you frequently experience anxiety about your life?”

“Do you sometimes fantasize about hurting yourself?”

This is one test she didn’t study for, and even though everyone tells her that there are no right answers, Betty comes out of the hospital with some cuts and bruises, new pills(“just for emergencies, when you feel overwhelmed”) and weekly appointments with a therapist.

Betty Cooper doesn’t tell her friends any of this. Instead she quits Captain Trash even though her heart aches for the kind of music that rattles her bones. She smiles prettily when she tells her mother that, with cheerleading and school, maybe won’t even have time for ballet and all her activities.

Betty Cooper is the sort of person who keeps two separate diaries. The second one is an unassuming black notebook, unnumbered and undated, that she drags around from class to class, from her bedroom to Archie’s garage, to her bass and to her trembling voice when it was her turn to share the lyrics she writes, even though their circle is warm with friendship and absolute trust.

(They have a rule, never make fun of each other’s writing)

(Even as Jughead writes like a mad man left alone in the candy shop of metaphors, and Archie’s rhymes are sunny and simple, they never laugh or even smile because it would break their sacred bond)

(Until Jughead breaks it first.)

Betty Cooper has a crush on Archie like a satellite has a crush on the planet it revolves around. At 13 it is all encompassing and intense, an escalation in their friendship that makes her wilder than ever, fighting and bumping into him at every chance she gets, feeling like her body is on fire. It mellows out, like a bad fever that goes away but leaves you changed, but by that time it’s too late. She’s attuned to his every move, aware of Archie’s body, the pull and stretch of it. She doesn’t touch him anymore, doesn’t play fight. Now it feels too dangerous.

She plays endless scenarios in her mind: she and Archie in the garage after dark, him texting that he needs her and she going out in the rain to find him waiting with open arms and a searing kiss. Or: they finally play a show in front of everyone and she is the vocalist and her voice is strong and true, and he is so impressed by her that he holds her in his arms and the applause and the acceptance she feels drowns all the noise in her head. In these early fantasies there are always tasteful fades to black but pretty soon her body is left burning and she doesn’t know what to do with it.

(good girls don’t do _that_ )

So she listens to music. Her room is silent but her ears are filled with songs by women, real grown up women who are angry and calling her to fight with them, and they guess what’s in her heart. She dances, thrashes on her bed, kicks the air, screams and no sound comes out and she’s left exhilarated and breathing heavy and laughing at herself. Sometimes she and Archie have a silent dance party via the window, and they smile at each other across the street when they stop, out of breath and suddenly shy.

(When Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” comes out Betty tries not to think about the similarities because a) that’s awkward and, b) that’s not punk, but Archie has no shame and sends her the link for the video, with a winking emoji.)

Betty Cooper really loves Archie Andrews.

* * *

 

From the notebook of Betty Cooper (black):

_All my days are gray except for the ones that are red_

_All my days are gray except when he’s burning hot_

_I want it all so bad it hurts_

_Good girls don’t want things this bad_

* * *

 

On the day she meets Veronica Lodge, Betty wakes up with renewed determination: today she will tell Archie she loves him.

Her diary(pink) reads:

_Today will be a YELLOW day._

_Convince yourself of this._

She has her first kiss that day.

(her entire body strums _Veronica Veronica Veronica_ , and Betty, who has had a picture of Patti Smith on her locker for years, considers the fact that she may be a bit gay)

She makes the cheerleading squad, makes a new friend, doesn’t tell Archie anything because of the glazed look on his face when Veronica walked into Pop’s having no idea she was about to change all their lives.

That night Betty’s diary(black) reads:

_You will never be good enough._

_Convince yourself of this._

* * *

 

On the day Cheryl Blossom is found by the water, one brother short, Betty’s diary (black) reads:

_Like Ophelia in the water, except the lover that leaves her insane is her brother._

_Red is a beautiful color for these beautiful rich people, looking down on us from their mansion built on thick, syrup-y sweetness. Maybe the sweetness is poisoning us, has poisoned the water Jason Blossom has disappeared into._

_The sweetness took Polly too. When I asked where they took my sister they said Polly is complicated. Polly is not well. Polly is not well and I may not be well too and if I don’t want to go away I know I should keep my mouth shut._

_My mouth is no good for words, and no good for kissing. It’s just meant to smile pretty in pictures._

 

Carefully, she cuts a picture of Millais’ Ophelia, glues it to the page, together with red lips and red pieces and waves waves waves that she draws in black ballpoint pen. She hasn’t talked to Jughead in a long time, ever since what she now refers to (in her head only) as The Garage Incident. She is ashamed to say she hasn’t even thought much about him, lost in the first weeks of school, and Archie and Veronica and Archie. But now she misses the boy with the crown keenly, she thinks about all the afternoons discussing murders and making connections and she wonders,

What does he think about Jason Blossom?

* * *

 

Locked inside a bar basement, Jason Blossom isn’t even dead yet. He is still grinning and talking back, “do you even know who I am? Don’t you know who my father is?”

Soon, Jason will be just an image, the sum of the things people project onto him. Not a lot of people will remember the real him, outside of the circumstances of his death and the final weeks of his life. So, here are some facts about Jason Blossom:

  * He was a Gemini, and always had a joke about that.
  * He only realized that he and Cheryl were separate beings when they were 7(seven).
  * He is not a natural redhead, but their mother dyed their hair for as long as he can remember. Sitting alongside his twin on the bathtub, the water turning red like the splotches on the back of their necks, those are some of the happiest memories he had.
  * For all that was written and said about him after his death, Jason Blossom was not a bad kid.
  * He dreamed of being an actor.
  * He truly loved Polly Cooper.
  * He would’ve called their baby Cherry.



* * *

 

It’s easier to talk about starting a band than to actually get one going. Ever since the night of the party, Jughead and Toni haven’t been able to agree on two essential things: how to have a punk band with no bass, and what to name it.

They discuss names at lunch, bent over their slices of stale cafeteria pizza and fighting over who gets to steal Leti’s empanadas.

“The Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell”, Toni suggests.

“I am not an actual woman Toni.”

Toni hits him with big puppy eyes and says, “You are one where it matters, in your heart”.

But when Jughead replies cheekily, “What about my dick?”, she throws a french fry in his face(it gets stuck in his beanie), and kicks him in the shin.

“Don’t be gross, a lot of women have those.”

They discuss it in the gym, where Toni has basketball practice at the same time Jughead has P.E. and she screams from the other court:

“Lightning Strikes Thrice”

“No one will be able to say it.”

He runs laps and she runs suicides with the team, and when their paths cross he says:

“Shouting Mariah Carey”

“I’m not about to get sued”

On her way back she shoots:

“Kill All White People”

“Again, I am white Toni. You know this.”

“You know I don’t see color.”

Even though they haven’t known each other for long, they settle into a familiar routine. Hanging out in their school’s barren music room after class. Going to the movies at the failing drive-in, even though they only play oldies (after the third viewing of Frankenstein’s Bride, they shout the lines along with the actors from inside Toni’s piece of shit truck).

Every friday, after school, they head over to Pop’s where Jughead used to spend hours writing, alone, and now spends hours writing in company, since they all bring their homework and Leti brings her poetry. Sometimes Alysha joins them, and Jughead is surprised to find out that she is studying to be a beautician, and generally has no time for their teenage punk bullshit. But when Toni gets too excited and loud, Alysha gives her a kiss or an absent minded pat on the knee and the other girl immediately calms down and stares at the long-haired older girl like she has hung the moon. At these times, Jughead and Leti avoid each other’s eyes and talk over the kissing sounds.

It’s in one of those afternoons, surrounded by papers and pancakes, laptops and fries and milkshakes, that Jughead learns that Jason Blossom is gone. He reads the newspaper someone left at their table and feels his stomach twist and lurch with each word. Cheryl found by the water. The boat flipping, but no body found. The strong current of the river, cold even though it’s a warm September. He also thinks about the night of the party, and the thing he didn’t quite promise to Polly.

What would he even tell Betty? That her sister parties in dodgy neighborhoods?

He justified this omission to himself, didn’t even think much about it then, but now the truth is staring him in the face. Jason Blossom is gone, and even though the paper makes it sound like an accident, Jughead feels like there’s something wrong here. He pushes the paper at Toni and her eyes widen a fraction when she sees the headline.

“Uh, wasn’t that the guy we saw at the party?”, her tone of voice is fake-casual, trying to gauge how he’s feeling about this. Leti clearly has realized that something is up because she looks up from her Outlander-inspired historical poem with a sharp look on her face.

“What guy at the party?”

Jughead replies before Toni can say anything about Polly, “A guy from my old school is missing, and he was at the party we went to. Do you guys know the Blossoms?”

“Creepy Richie Riches? Yeah, we know them. You do know we live in the same place, right?”, Leti’s tone is sarcastic but biting as she rips the paper from Toni and her eyes quickly scan through the news. “It says here it was probably a boating accident.”

It’s Toni’s turn to look uncomfortable, fidgeting for a minute with Alysha’s hair (the other girl smacks her hand away) before apparently making up her mind and saying, fake casually, “That guy was talking to your brother at the party, Leti.”

Leti’s face shuts down immediately into a frown and she throws the paper on the table, dragging her laptop back in front of her and typing away angrily as she replies,

“A lot of rich kids talk to Joaquin, doesn’t mean shit other than him having good weed. Hey, but Creepy Richie Rich is a good band name for you guys.” It’s clear that Leti wants to change the subject but Jughead is more interested than ever. That guy was Leti’s brother? The one who knew Jason Blossom, and his father’s name? He looks at Toni, angry that she didn’t tell him before, but she shrugs apologetic and changes the conversation, starting to argue that Richie Rich is a clearly superior movie to Home Alone.

And Jughead would have let it go, if Betty Cooper hadn’t entered Pop’s in that exact moment. She is laughing freely with Archie, a brunette girl, and that dude named Kevin. Even though Jughead has made his peace with Southside High, no one there looks like Betty. Watching her from afar like this, being carefree and looking so much like the girl he grew up with, feels like a kick in the stomach. He used to be part of that, that circle of light she walks in, and even though he built a new home around himself, he misses it. He needs to tell her about what he saw at the party. He needs to never talk to her again.

They didn’t actually break up or anything, so Archie notices them in the corner booth and bro-nods at Jughead, raising an inquiring eyebrow at the mismatched group of people he is with. Jughead thinks Archie may come over and introduce himself, maybe they could all be friends. But Archie, bless his heart, is quickly distracted by something the dark haired girl says, and the moment is gone. Betty half waves at him before continuing to talk to Kevin, and just like that, Jughead’s oldest friends in the world sit in another booth, without sparing him a second glance.

He notices that Toni has been watching him watching them, staring at him with calculating eyes that tell him he’s in trouble.

“Maybe,” she says smiling devilishly, “Maybe we should call it Major Trash. Like a captain has been promoted.”

“Oh, punny. I kind of like that”, Leti replies without looking away from her screen.

Jughead feels his heart in his throat.

“Now that we have a name, we can focus on finding our bass.”

Alysha says “not it”, and Toni laughs and kisses her forehead, and Leti sighs, and Dilton says something about band names not mattering because every one of them will die. Jughead looks at the discarded newspaper on the table…

Jason Blossom looks back at him, the picture of ideal American masculinity in his varsity jacket, with his 1000 watt smile.

It’s time to talk to Betty Cooper.

* * *

 

You can say whatever you want about Cheryl Blossom, and god knows people have done that over the years, but here’s some absolute facts about Riverdale’s favourite redhead power player:

  * She was always much smarter than Jason, and did both of their homework, changing the calligraphy and wording just like they traded places before biology did away with that for good.
  * The minute she realized Jason was a separate person from herself, she decided to marry him.
  * She wasn’t worried about him when he vanished(she knew better than that).
  * She is a great party planner.
  * She is a great actress.



It goes like this:

On monday, Cheryl declares that finding her brother is the most important thing that anyone in this mountain town has ever done, and so they join a search party and walk the woods, not one of them really knowing what they are looking for.

She asks Betty Cooper, who is bland and boring and particularly fun to torment, if Betty would mind baking a few cakes for a bake sale that Cheryl is organizing during Homecoming week. All the profits will go to help find missing children like her own brother, and Betty, being Betty, says yes, of course, she would love to help.

Before homecoming and the baking of cakes though, Cheryl throws a party. Betty goes, hoping for that magic moment that is in all teen movies, the moment where Archie will look at her and _see_ her, and grab her face and kiss her so hard it hurts. Instead, they spin the bottle and Archie ends up in the closet with Veronica.

(Veronica tries so hard to be good.)

(She’s not a natural at it.)

Another thing you must know what Cheryl is that she may be an agent of chaos in Riverdale, but she does nothing by accident.

* * *

 

Betty angry bakes a lot.

She doesn’t eat everything she makes (not because she cares about being thin and beautiful but because she cares about being _healthy_ okay), but the process is soothing and easy. You just follow the recipe, and in the end you get a cake.

It helps her when she’s feeling alone and inadequate, and it helps her now that’s she’s feeling alone and useless. The house is eerily quiet, her dad is downstairs in his man-cave doing whatever he does there, and her mom is at work, digging down deeper in what she calls “this Blossom scandal”.

(Like someone’s child isn’t gone.)

Her sister, gone.

She knows that Polly and Jason were dating, everyone knows that because her sister, bless her heart, always wanted to be honest above all else. Even if honesty meant shouting matches and slamming doors and a cold war with their mother. Honest and strong and good, all things that Betty is not, shrouded instead in her need to please others. She doesn’t think about her own failings as she carefully measures and mixes the ingredients for carrot cake, with her phone is tucked into the elastic band of her pajama pants, while through the headphones she listens to the same songs over and over.  

( _hunger makes me a modern girl_ )

Fact: Two weeks before Jason was gone, after what seemed like a particularly terrible fight between Polly and their mother, Polly was gone. Their parents sat down with Betty on the couch and told Betty all about Jason breaking her sister’s heart, and how teen girls are fragile, especially problematic teen girls with an history of mental issues like Polly and Betty. The subtext is obvious: don’t you know how easy you are to break?

Fact: Now Jason Blossom is gone.

These two things, - getting home after ballet practice and finding Polly already gone; and Cheryl shivering, wet and red and alone by the river - keep popping up in Betty’s mind like they’re intrinsically connected and she just can’t see how yet. The carrot cake is in the oven, and she starts on a lemon blueberry mix but still can’t stop thinking about it. She’s so absorbed that she doesn’t notice her phone vibrating till it falls down the leg of her pants and she must fish it out to read the texts:

_I need to talk to you Betts, can I come over?_

_I lied, I’m already outside._

_It’s cold pls open the door I promise I won’t be a douche again_

Jughead.

Betty’s stomach does a backflip, and for a split second she considers running upstairs and getting dressed just so she doesn’t feel weirdly inferior in her cat pajamas. She saw him the other day at Pop’s, with a group of girls and a guy dressed in all-black everything, and they all seemed… So very cool. They looked like they were in a movie about attractive, diverse misfits. One of the girls had a pink mohawk in high school, for christ’s sake. Betty had felt painfully plain, in her sensible dark wash jeans, and her even more sensible powder blue sweater. The way Jughead had been smiling and laughing, not looking like the brooding bad boy in their soap opera, that had hurt Betty even more than the jealousy she felt at the black girls’ Bikini Kill tshirt.

(How is it that they stopped talking for a month and Jughead already found a cool girl who likes Bikini Kill. And who did Betty find? Veronica.)

(Veronica, who is strictly into nineties R’n’B and some dude called Maluma, and who kissed Archie in a closet. So, if you ask Betty, that’s some bullshit right there.)

Instead of running like she wants to, Betty breathes through her fight or flight response opens the kitchen’s back door, only to find Jughead already there, crown beanie and S tshirt, and sheepish smile looking at her. Like he had never stopped coming over, like it’s not 9 o’clock on a tuesday and tomorrow is a school day. Like he doesn’t have anything better to do than hang out with old, boring Betty Cooper.

“Are you going to literally freeze me out, Betty?” he says breaking the silence, and Betty jumps back and opens the door, remembering her manners. He looks out of place in their tasteful middle class farmhouse-inspired kitchen, awkward and hunched with that smirk on his face as he moves past her and promptly sits on her mother’s pride and joy, the breakfast island.

(She wants to scream: DO YOU THINK I’M BORING?)

(She also wants to scream: COUNTERS ARE NOT CHAIRS, which is a pretty damning answer to the first question.)

Instead, she casually explains the sweet chaos that reigns over her kitchen:

“I’m baking cakes to help find Jason Blossom.” Betty moves back to the safe place of her kitchen counter, taking the bowl and giving a good angry whisking to the lemon batter before continuing, “Which do you think is more ‘we hope you didn’t drown’: chocolate, carrot… traditional sponge with chantilly?”

“If I was missing and presumed dead and you made sponge cake in my memory I would be so mad. I would come back as a ghost and haunt you over it for the rest of your life. So I guess it depends on your tolerance of wet ginger ghosts.”

“You’ve been here for five minutes and I’m already a worse person for it”, their banter back and forth is so familiar that it’s almost as if they never grew up and she’s still a tomboy running wild with him and Archie, obsessed with death and punk as fuck. But reality is unavoidable and so she slams the blueberries into the batter, carefully pours it into a buttered pan, and finally turns to face him. She catches him red handed, with his fingers in the icing.

Then he smiles, and licks a icing-covered finger and she knows he’s playing at being sexy to make her laugh, but her throat still goes dry. Betty points her wooden spoon at him, ready to make a point with it, or at least tell him that he’s gross, but suddenly words are pouring out of her:

“Why are you in my kitchen eating my we’re-sorry-your-brother-is-missing icing? You know it was really shitty what you said to Archie. We didn’t laugh at any of your songs, and he’s still our friend, you had no right…”

He interrupts her, suddenly red and shocked with anger, “Oh I’m still your friend? I moved schools and suddenly you guys have cute jam sessions without me? Except it’s not even a jam session Betty, it’s just you drooling over Archie’s biceps! I thought you were punk!”

“Do. Not. Talk to me like that in MY kitchen!” She slams her wooden spoon down on the counter, “And keep your voice down, my dad is downstairs and you’re definitely not allowed over.”

Her face is stormy and wild, and he jumped off the counter in the middle of his rant. They are both closer than they thought, and breathing hard, ready to tear each other apart, but Jughead is the first to break eye contact. He avoids her eyes, staring at the floor tiles like they’re super interesting before he continues, with his voice much lower.

“I’m sorry. That was way out of line Betty”, he says her name so softly, and just as he does it he looks at her and his blue eyes are so kind. She’s melting and forgiving him before she even knows it, and she sighs.

“I’m sorry too. We… _I_ did stop talking to you when you went to the Southside. I…” she doesn’t want to continue but she does, in a whisper, like she’s telling him a secret, “I was afraid you thought I was boring now.”

In a flurry he’s putting the icing down and closing the distance between them, pulling her into a rare, all-encompassing, Jughead hug. Jughead hugs are rare but only more precious because of it, and he’s truly the best hugger. He holds you so tight that you feel indispensable, and he lets Betty put her arms around him and maybe shed a few tears into his shoulder without letting go or embarrassing her. She hasn’t been held by anyone in a long time, and it feels so nice, even as he says into her hair:

“I would never think you boring, Betts. You’re the most interesting person I know. I’m sorry for freaking out on you,” he does let go of her now, and holds her shoulders instead, forcing her to look him in the eyes as he admits, “I was jealous.”

Betty rubs tears out of her eyes and smiles up at him, the air between them much clearer now.

“Okay, that was a nice emotional outburst. I’m sorry for freaking out on you, too. And for being jealous as well. Now, tell me what you really want.”

This makes Jughead suddenly awkward, as he picks up the icing bowl again just to fiddle with it in a way that makes Betty raise her eyebrows. She knows this boy well, and he either has something to ask of her, or he’s about to confess to something.

Finally, Jughead says, “Do you want to trade secrets?”

Trading secrets was something they did when they were kids, trading awful embarrassing things and gossip bits like other kids traded Pokémon cards. She knows what he’s doing, but she doesn’t know what secrets to give him, so she says:

“Sure. Do you want to start?”

“Yes”, he dips his finger in the icing again, and licks it before continuing, “I made a promise to someone not to tell you something, and I don’t know if I’m right to break it.”

“First of all, please stop that, that’s gross and I’ll have to do new icing now, thanks. Second, that is not a secret. That’s a preamble.”

“Ah, you caught me.”

“And third, I would argue that, since you’re here, you’ve already made a decision about that.”

Betty sounds casual but her heart is beating against her ribs. She dips her finger in the bowl he’s holding and licks it just to have something to do, only for her face to grow warm when she catches his eyes flicking to her lips.

“Yeah, I guess you caught me there too. Okay. Secret: I saw your sister and Jason in a Southside party, just before he went missing. He was talking to a serpent’s guy.”

Betty’s lack of reaction to this is one of the reasons Jughead will never be bored with her. Instead of crying, or disbelieving, or even asking why he didn’t tell her before, Betty has already moved on. He can see her brilliant brain working with this new information, making connections and seeing where this fits. Then she licks her finger again, apparently lost in thought, and he dies a bit inside before she speaks:

“Okay. Secret: My parents sent my sister away just before Jason went missing, and I think they’re hiding something from me. Maybe something to do with Jason being gone.”

Jughead nods thoughtfully, and Betty feels such a wave of affection for him, even as he keeps stealing the gross icing from her.

“Look at us”, he says, “We’re trading information like russian spies.”

She nods, serious and calm even though she feels so nervous she might throw up all this sweetness she keeps eating with no concern for sugar or calories.

“I didn’t come here just to trade secrets,” Jughead continues, almost flinching like he knows the next words will be painful, “I was actually hoping you would do me a favor.”

“Okay.”

He is wide eyed with wonder at first, like she just gave him a puppy for Christmas, but she waits for the realization of reciprocity to fall on his face, as it does eventually when his eyes narrow and darken, looking right through her.  
“Okay? Just like that? Don’t you want to know what you’re agreeing to, or will you do whatever I want?” His voice, low and growly, makes her blush, and even though she tells herself that this is not flirting, Alice Cooper’s daughter is not dumb. They are standing very close now.

Here are the facts as Betty sees them:

  * Jughead is immersed in Southside High.
  * Jason’s disappearance, and her sister’s sudden mental illness, are connected to the Serpents.
  * Jughead is a good writer, but a better detective.



“I trust you”, she says, and means it. She gathers her courage around her, and pointedly doesn’t think before what she does next. She grabs his wrist and stops his hand mid-air, two of his fingers coated with vanilla sugar icing. Then, she slowly takes them to her mouth, and sucks.

For all intents and purposes, Jughead has a break down. Betty watches it happen with dark eyes, doesn’t look away from him even as her tongue traces his rough fingertips, gently, and then lets go of his fingers with a soft pop.

The silence is thick between them. Betty says:

“Help me find out what happened to Jason.”

At the exact same time, Jughead blurts out:

“Please be in my band.”

That breaks the tension between them, she lets go of his wrist and they laugh together in a burst, even though none of this is funny. She says okay, yes, she will, but only until they find a more permanent bass player, and only on weekends and thursdays. He says, yes, okay, he will, and helps her whip up another batch of icing while they discuss theories on what happened to Jason Blossom.

They keep some secrets for themselves.

* * *

 

From the diary of Betty Cooper (black):

_TODAY WAS FUCKING RED._

_His fingertips tasted like salt and were rough against my tongue_

_Where did that version of me come from?_

_The one who looked into his eyes and took him into her mouth and felt power and control over him, like that was a good thing, like that’s what we were meant to do._

_Juggie. We grew up together. How is it that now I don’t know this man at all? And I don't think he knows me either._

_I miss noise._

_I miss my sister._

* * *

 

Next morning, Jason Blossom’s swollen body is found in the river.

Jughead Jones will spend the rest of his life hyper-aware that Jason Blossom’s death was the best thing that happened to him. Years later, when he is an acclaimed author of horror novels and thrilling crime stories, he sometimes wakes in the middle of the night with a guilty question nagging at him:

Is he only here because Jason died?

There is no easy answer.

(Yes.)

(That’s pretty much the only answer.)


	4. John Wayne Gacy's basement has got nothing on you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Major Trash catches a break, Archie Andrews gets broken, and someone gets killed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that this chapter touches on issues of consent and abuse, not in an explicit way, and just elaborating on things that were not explored in the show.
> 
> (it's about Gunty, basically)
> 
> If you'd like to listen to some of the music Betty and Toni mention in this fic, here's a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/11101303548/playlist/3FsqWln7GKyrOAj2IJ6DhX) for all your girl punk needs.
> 
> Also, I made a moodboard for this fanfic if you're at Tumblr dot com and you want to check that out, it's [here](http://fuckingskywalkers.tumblr.com/post/167664660564/teenage-dirtbags-the-punk-rock-au-betty-cooper).

Major Trash’s first rehearsal is… a challenge. For a band composed of Jughead “please stop calling me Forsythe” Jones, Betty “pastels are my neutral” Cooper, and Toni “like Soprano and the color” Topaz, there were some immediate, obvious, challenges. True, now they have an angry drummer, over-skilled and overachieving bassist, and mediocre but enthusiastic guitar and lead vocals. They also have a name, yes, and even a logo that Dilton draws for them, of a trash can on fire.

“Because you’re fucking trash and everything should be on fire.”

“Wow, thanks Dilton.”

What they don’t have is instruments to call their own, nor a rehearsal room where they can practice on weekends, which is the only time allowed by the previously mentioned overachiever bassist’s schedule.

So far, Toni and Jughead had made do with Southside High’s failing music room where he frankensteins a drum kit out of miscellaneous parts, and Toni rocks the best she can on an acoustic guitar, but now that  Betty has joined the mix, they’ve outgrown that. And besides, they attend a school with a metal detector. No one is about to give a couple of weird kids the keys to school property for them to use on a weekend, no matter how important they argue their “project” is.

That leaves our fledgling musical effort with two choices: either they convince straight-A, straight-laced Betty, to use her powers as a productive member of society for evil… Or they talk to Archie. At the drive-in that friday, Jughead and Toni get burgers and discuss their options.

“I don’t see why this is such a big deal. Either way, you basically just have to ask your friends for help.”

“Well, yes, don’t you see the problem?”

“Not really, no, but then again, I’m a relatively healthy person, mentally, I’m not, you know… You.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Toni rolls her eyes and doesn’t dignify that with an answer, instead she eats another fry and mouths along with Karloff projected in the big screen, “we’re are the long dead” while Jughead mulls it over.

“If I’m going to ask Betty, you’ll need to meet her first. She’ll have to… like you.”

“There’s nothing not to like!” Toni exclaims, but after a pause concedes, “Okay, what’s the problem with the Archie solution then?”

“I… I sort of wanted this to be our thing. Without Archie.”

He refuses to take his eyes away from the screen as he says this, but he feels more than hears Toni softly laughing besides him. It’s not funny to laugh at people with insecurities, he wants to tell her, but that’s too lame and he had his share of emotional honesty with Betty the other day.

“Are you afraid I’m going to take one look at your ginger friend and catch feels?”

“It seems to have happened to every other girl in this town.” He sighs and crumples the used burger wrapping with unnecessary force, “It’s not that, it’s just… Can I have this thing? Just the one?”

“You’re being an idiot, but okay, then we’ll talk to Betty. She goes to that fancy school, just tell her to get us a room and we’ll get to know her and toss some ideas around. I bet those Pussycat girls use the school stuff all the time.”

“They actually have a professional recording studio.”

For a few minutes they just watch the movie and slurp soda, before Toni says:

“You know I’ll always respect those girls doing it for themselves, but fuck the Pussycats man. Fuck them.”

Jughead considers pointing out that, in another life, maybe Toni could’ve been a Pussycat too, but he figures he would probably get his ass kicked for that, and in a rare show of self-preservation, he keeps his mouth shut.

 

It takes more time than Jughead would like, to convince Betty to request a rehearsal room for them on thursday. Riverdale school has a really good music program, that has produced a long list of respected national acts, of which everyone is hoping Josie and the Pussycats will soon be added as a moderate commercial success. Major Trash, however, may not be the sound that Riverdale High will really want to support.

_That’s why you need to be the one who asks them, Betty. Please._

_It just seems like it may be taking advantage_

_Advantage of what? Of resources that should be open for all students anyway and not just for a strict few that are apparently blessed with politics of respectability? Why are we allowing our arts programs to be defined by the establishment people, who are inherently corrupted re: deciding the art that is or is not valuable to the population?_

She replies a few minutes later,

_NERD ALERT._

There were a lot of siren emojis following that. Another text from Betty comes in right away:

_Are you pleased juggie, are you happy that you were nerd alerted by me, literally the nerdiest person you know?_

_You’re no longer the nerdiest person I know. One of my friends writes poems about Harry Potter fucking Draco Malfoy._

_If I request the damn room, will you stop?_

Thursday after school is out, Jughead and Toni leave the Southside, get on the bus to the other side of town, and walk, triumphantly out of place, into the immaculate corridors of Riverdale High. He’s wearing his crown beanie and Toni’s Black Flag tshirt, while she’s walking by his side with her ever present purple combat boots. For Jughead, who never felt like he belonged here, it’s like they’re in Reservoir Dogs and walking in slow motion, the coolest kids in town.

“Wow, you can really smell the money.” Toni sniffs the air deeply and dramatic, opening her arms, “Ah, the scent of a future and all those extra curriculars and pre college courses.”

Jughead shoves Toni playfully for that, and then they both set for the basement, where the music rooms are located. He feels like a complete stranger in this school where the cafeteria carries vegan options and a salad bar, and no one tried to stab anyone in third period.

On the other hand, these were the hallways Jason Blossom walked, and his body still ended up swollen and rotten down the river.

Betty is already there when they get to the room, she has her homework open in front of her and is taking notes on a black notebook when they open the door. She quickly puts it away before standing up and approaching Toni with a stretched hand and a smile that is so perfect that, to Jughead trained eye, it reads fake. He notices Betty’s sweater immediately, and he can tell Toni notices it too because her eyes flick right down to it.

Betty is wearing a grey sweater, with a crown in it.

Jughead feels his face go so hot that he can only hope it’s not as red as it feels. He curses himself when his hands instinctively go to his beanie, straightening it. That sweater makes it look like she belongs to him, and he can’t help but think about her darkened eyes staring right into him as she took his fingers into her mouth and licked through the middle of them.

“You must be Toni! Hi, Betty Cooper.”

The two girls shake hands, thankfully ignoring Jughead’s inner turmoil, and he watches this interaction like a referee in a tennis match. Betty is extra-friendly, strictly looking Toni in the eyes as they prolong the handshake just a tiny bit over what would be normal. The other girl, however, looks Betty up and down like she’s sizing her up, and Jughead wishes he had a hole to hide in. Why did he agree to bring his two worlds together like this?

“So, you’re Betty. Jughead told me so much about you. It’s like he literally can’t shut up.”

“Oh, I hope he didn’t raise your expectations too high. He also… talks a lot about you.” He never said more than a sentence about Toni to Betty, and he can tell that the blonde girl’s polite assertion doesn’t hide that at all. “You know, I love your hair!”

“Thank you so much, my girlfriend does it for me.” Toni puts all the emphasis in the word girlfriend, and Jughead notices that Betty blushes a bit at it, but a lot of the tension between them disappears. He hopes Betty isn’t weird about lesbians, it’s not like they ever talked about that before, and maybe he should’ve mentioned Toni’s sexuality just to make sure that Betty was cool. Toni, however, doesn’t seem to think that Betty is being weird. She’s actually smiling like the cat who ate the cream as she finishes, “She’s going to beauty school and I’m kind of her test subject.”

“Oh… Oh, that’s lovely.”

Both girls are grinning at each other now, and Jughead feels that while it seemed to him that they were just exchanging pleasantries, Betty and Toni were actually having a super complex conversation in some language alien to him. Maybe “my girlfriend does my hair” is code for something.

(It’s code for: “I see some bullshit happening here, and I want you to know that I am in a serious relationship.”

And: “I appreciate you for clarifying that and not making this awkward between me and this boy I may or may not like.”)

But after that, things go smoothly. Toni shares her favourite Bikini Kill songs, and Betty is gushing about Corin Tucker in about 0.5 seconds, as they set up the instruments. Jughead is happy to just let them talk, and he’s also happy that the drum kit is already in place (god bless schools with money) and he only has to adjust it to his liking before he’s all set. Toni is so excited to be able to make noise on an electric guitar that they actually spend the first half hour of rehearsal just jamming, and Betty helps the other girl with her stance and with the amp settings.

They play for a bit, settling into their new formation. Jughead has missed proper drums, so he puts on a bit of a show while they practice, taking the time to beat out a crazy drum solo while both girls watch with cocked eyebrows and amused expressions. Betty quickly declares that she is not one for singing, and that is just fine because Toni actually has a good, deep voice, and a perfect sense of rhythm and tempo that makes up for a lot of her inexperience. Also, she is great at screaming. Jughead is hot and sweating pretty soon, and he loses first his hoodie and then his plaid shirt, sitting there in a white tshirt like that is okay and normal, his hair sticking to his forehead under the beanie. Betty is so distracted by the evident exposed muscle on Jughead’s arms that she actually misses track of two beats when both of them are doing “Icky Thumb” just for fun while Toni is taking 5(five’’) for water, and watching the two more experienced musicians play together. Soon they will have to go home, but when Betty looks at Jughead with a brilliant smile, a wild smile, and she says,

“Hey, before we go, do you guys wanna do Rebel Girl?”

How could he say no to that?

Toni is great as their lead singer, her voice is a lot lower than Kathleen Hanna’s but it gives the song a different texture, makes it more like a song from someone who is lovestruck by the coolest girl they’ve ever seen, instead of the friendship vibe of the original. When Toni says “they say she’s a dyke”, she spits the word with such fire that it turns into a battle cry.

When they finish Betty is also red and sweaty, but still wearing her crown sweater, and she rushes to hug Toni, their instruments clanking together when she throws her arms around the taller girl’s neck.

“That was so perfect!”

Toni laughs and hugs her back with just one arm, with the other gesturing for Jughead to join them. He does, eventually, and the three teenagers hug in an empty music room after school on a thursday, and they feel just as victorious as if they’d just played Glastonbury.

Jughead has a warm feeling in his stomach as he puts his layers on again, even as Toni ribs him about being a Teen Idol, and it takes him a while to realize that what he feels is great, unbound, uncomplicated happiness. Of course it couldn’t last. As they step onto the hallways two things happen almost simultaneously:

  * One, Toni grabs a flyer and starts saying “Sweet Jesus Fernando Cristo, we are saved!”, before,
  * Two, Archie Andrews stumbles out of a supposedly empty classroom and is now standing in front of them looking as freaked out to see them, as they are surprised to see him.



“Archie! I didn’t know you were still here,” Betty says like this is totally normal and to be expected, smiling at Archie like he is the inventor of puppies, “Were you working on your special assignment with Miss Gunty?”

Behind Betty’s back, Jughead is relieved when Toni looks at him with a look on her face that mirrors his feelings. The look says that Betty is a genius, musically and with most things in life, but Toni and Jughead have other expertise, the sort of expertise that is gleamed from living and studying in the Southside and learning to always expect the worst out of people. Their years of studying the human condition give them insight that Betty does not have, namely, that Archie Andrews looks _fucked_.

He looks utterly debauched, red hair askew and tshirt put on inside out (how is Betty not seeing this?) and Jughead notices, with clinical eye, that Archie’s fly is down. Toni mouths to him “What the fuck?”, but in reply Jughead just shrugs and begs the heavens for his pink haired friend’s common sense to make a very special appearance on what seems to be a very special episode on why you shouldn’t fuck your teachers.

“Oh, hi, guys!” Archie actually looks sheepish and rubs his hair even worse, making Jughead’s eye twitch before the redhead points at the forgotten flyer in Toni’s hand and says, “Are you guys going to compete in Battle of the Bands?”

Toni, bless her, takes his hint and runs with it, remembering her call for hispanic Jesus and choosing to pay it forward on Archie Andrews saying “Yeah, guys, ginger Ken is right! Check this out!” before she shoves the flyer on Betty’s hand.

While Toni and Archie introduce one another (“My name is actually Archie”, “Will you be mad if I still call you ginger Ken?” “Nah, it’s the truth”), Betty and Jughead read the flyer that was ripped from an announcement board.

Battle of the bands.

A month from now.

A thousand dollars (1000 USD) cash prize.

“And a 50 bucks voucher for Pop’s if we get second place! We will feast like kings. Please say that we can do it Betty, please please please say yes.” Toni is literally begging with her hands raised in prayer to the blonde cheerleader, and her act is 90% natural drama, and 10% trying to defuse the tension.

Jughead can see in Betty’s face that she’s not convinced at all, she just agreed on being their bass player until they found someone more permanent to substitute her. But still, he joins Toni on the puppy eyes front and carefully adds,

“We could get our own instruments with that money, maybe.”

“Maybe even a van!” Toni completes, with glowing eyes and even shinier smile.

Betty sighs and resumes walking away, smiling at Archie and asking if he will join them before she sighs, “Toni, a van and instruments for a thousand bucks? You may be thrifty but not even Macklemore is that good.”

“Welcome to 2017 Betty, Macklemore is dead. Besides, Leti’s uncle Carlos could probably get us a van for like 200 bucks and…”

“You guys are really on a band together?” Archie had sort of fallen behind during the conversation and now he’s looking at them looking puzzled and lost, like this is a new feeling for him.

“Sort of. Betty’s still on the fence,” Jughead allows.

“What? No! Betty belongs to us now!” Toni puts her arm around Betty, who squeals and blushes in delight, punk still coursing through her veins making her feel happy to belong to the weirdos. Toni starts a chant of “One of us, one of us, one of us!” and Jughead just laughs and ducks his head before he is forced to join.

Archie, in his still-backwards shirt and open fly, trying to keep up with the tumbling trio, looks like a kicked ginger puppy.

“But… I thought you said you had… Ballet?” he sounds defeated.

“I quit ballet like two months ago Archie. Besides,” Betty says not unkindly, even as she shakes Toni’s arm off smiling at the other girl before still saying pointedly, “I am just helping them out till they find another bass.”

Betty doesn’t confirm nor deny that she’ll be in Battle of the Bands, but she doesn’t protest either when Toni scribbles “Major Trash” on the register sheet, with her loopy disproportionate handwriting. They walk out of school and into the dying daylight with squinted eyes.

* * *

 

Archie Andrews is not the first almost-underage kid that the woman who is calling herself Gertrude Gunty has slept with, but he’s certainly the sweetest. He’s all strong arms and an even stronger jaw but he melts like honey into her, and he’s so eager to please.

If she had friends to have drinks with, she would make some sort of sarcastic and cutting remark about boys without mothers wanting to be on their knees. Sometimes she likes to imagine the laugh track playing in the background of these imaginary conversations, like she is in some sort of Sex and the City remake, about older women getting what they want.

She has a small apartment in this shit town, where all her stuff is still in boxes. She gets her bills there. Every bill she pays that is addressed to Gertrude Gunty is another nail building this identity of hers.

(What do you call this sort of construction, hollow and flimsy? If you’re unkind, you call it a coffin.)

Her living room still smells of mildew even though she burns incense there, it lingers from the mold in the bathroom, in her sheets covering the mattress on the floor. Archie offers to make her feel more at home, build her a proper bed that they can break, but she plays it like a woman who’s afraid to create roots and declines his offer, and she knows that he’ll make the connections on his own and concoct a better backstory than she ever could. Maybe something with a jealous ex-boyfriend, or even a husband. She preys on this, on his protectiveness, pulls him closer based on his best feelings. She knows exactly what to say to keep him, because this is not the first sweet like honey boy that she traps. She makes him feel like this is his idea. She makes him feel like he’s the one to blame.

Who told him to go around being so beautiful all the time? He should know what he does to women.

When she’s alone in this rotting house she smokes a bitter cigarette on her bare mattress and it’s harder to escape the thought that there are other words for what she’s doing with Archie Andrews, for what she has done with all these boys.

Words that no laugh track can drown out, like “felony” and “abuse”. Words like, “predator”.

The woman calling herself Gertrude Gunty likes to think of life as a big movie, where she’s always playing the victim, the bumbling woman who goes around her setting fire to the things she loves, but always on accident and always in a charmingly aloof way. If this were one of these movies, she would have one of those also charming, but tragic, backstories that she prefers to have Archie imagine for her. Sometimes she pictures these stories in her head, tells these sort of lies to herself:

  * She was abused, and this is a scar that someone placed on her, she is condemned to place on others.
  * Her mother never loved her.
  * Boys have hurt her before.
  * She is sick, and cannot be blamed for her actions.
  * These teenage boys are gagging for it, and besides they are lucky that she even pays them attention.
  * She’s educating them, taking time out of her life to help them figure out women a little bit earlier, and a little bit better, than any high school girl could.



The woman who pays the bills coming to Gertrude’s house has a thousand more justifications and apologies, and sly comments on why she has to have this. This being Archie Andrews begging for her to stay, promising to take care of her, covering a possible murder for her.

(how many Archies have there been? An Archie is an Archie, by any other name.)

But we are interested in facts, and so here is one about the faceless woman living in Gertrude Gunty’s name:

  * She does this because she likes it.



From the moment she heard the gunshot and Jason Blossom went missing, she knew she wasn’t long for Riverdale. So, when she gets too close to the truth and can no longer see her life as a funny sitcom, when she is tired and bored of the intense earnestness of Archie Andrews, then she puts the boxes back in her car again.

And she drives off.

 

This is the first time Archie’s heart has been broken, and he throws himself at it with reckless abandon. He tells the sheriff about the gunshot, tells his dad, puts all his secrets out in the open. All they say is that he should’ve known better, that he is a man and as a man, he has responsibilities on this matter.

Of course, the age of consent is 16, this was not a crime and he is fine with that,

(he’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine)

He feels rotten. He feels guilty and dirty. He talks to his father, a stilted conversation that is really about murder, not about sex or love or any of things that Archie really wants to talk about. He can’t look his father in the eyes and tell him this.

He stares at his phone and thinks about calling Betty, but he can’t face the knowing that she knows he’s this sort of person. Now she must know that the other day, when they caught him at school, Archie wasn’t just having help with an assignment. He lays on his bed and stares at her number in his phone till his eyesight blurs. That everyone now knows this secret that has been weighing on his chest means relief, but it also means that he feels raw and exposed, all his bits and pieces are out in the world to be written in newspapers and police reports.

He’s not even thinking as he calls Jughead.

For three excruciating rings, he fears that Jughead won’t pick up on him. Archie has spent weeks drowning for the real world between Gunty’s legs, but he still has enough awareness to know that Jughead has been slipping away, their bro-ness is not as it were before, safe and familiar and concrete after all these years.

On the fourth ring, Jughead picks up and Archie realizes that he has no idea what to say. He wants to pour his heart out on the phone. He wants to apologize. He wants to get angry and ask what Jughead and Betty think they are doing, starting a band without him. But because at the end of the day, they are still teenage boys, what he ends up doing is saying “Do you wanna come over for Call of Duty?”

Jughead hesitates, but knowing someone since they were in diapers is a powerful motivation tool, and in twenty minutes he’s standing at Archie’s doorstep and they move to the redhead’s room with no more than a clap on the back. After playing for an hour, finally, Jughead asks:

“Do you wanna talk about how you were fucking Miss Gunty and that’s why you couldn’t hang out all summer?”

His best friend has always been a little shit. There are a lot of things that Archie could say to that question. Like how it wasn’t fucking, it was making love and it was wonderful and precious and made his heart ache. Or, there are other reasons for them to not hang out anymore, reasons that are convenient for Jughead to ignore, like how Jughead is always self-serious and self-righteous while Archie has been involved with the business of becoming a man, working in construction and yes, fucking the teacher. Jughead is not the first guy to pop out a variation of this question, but with his teammates normally there is a tone of reverence and horniness, while Jughead is just pushing buttons.

“That’s not… That’s not why we couldn’t hang out.” The weight of the world is tensing Archie’s shoulders. They refuse to look at each other while talking, focusing instead on the violence in the screen, “Jughead, can you try to pretend that this is not about you for a minute?”

To his credit, Jughead chuckles at that, “Ah, it’s the curse of a writer. You should’ve been friends with Hemingway if you think I’m that bad. Are you okay though?”

Archie is not okay. Jughead is the first person who asks him, and when faced with the opportunity to finally talk, Archie does. He talks about how he and Miss Gunty got involved, how he felt about her, he tells Jughead about working construction all day and then riding the bike home for a quick shower before hopping on the bike again and pedalling as fast as he could to her apartment. He tells his best friend about the exhaustion and the exhilaration of keeping secrets like that. He talks about the shot they both heard, and how he couldn’t stay silent anymore, it was eating him inside. Archie is not made for secrets, secrets need shadows and someone who shines this brightly cannot keep them hidden for long.

Even though Archie talks and talks without pausing the game and without looking Jughead in the eye, eventually he starts crying, sobbing, and they pause it then, because Jughead pulls Archie into him for a hug that feels a lot like putting bones together after a car accident.

He says “It wasn’t your fault okay, it wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t your fault Archie”, and clumsily pets red hair until his friend stops crying and can breathe again.

Jughead goes home with a impression of his friend’s face on his shirt, the rough outline drawn in wetness as in a shroud.

* * *

 

The first few meetings of the True Crime Club: Jason Blossom Edition are a lot more productive than Major Trash’s first rehearsal, maybe because this time it’s just Jughead and Betty and a big white board.

Jughead gets used to the routine of leaving Southside High and riding the bus to the wealthier school across town, where he and Betty meet in The Blue and Gold headquarters and exchange facts and theories breathlessly. One of those afternoon, Jughead tells Betty about the serpent who knew his father’s name.

“I was going to ask Leti about it but,” he hesitates, “I think the guy, Joaquin, he doesn’t live with them anymore. He works in a shitty dive bar on the Southside, it’s all serpents there. She doesn’t like talking about him, and she shut me down really quick when I tried.”

He still doesn’t tell Betty that he’s also been spending less and less time at home, if he can help it. He doesn’t do it because it’s not important for their True Crime Club, but also because there is shame there, at the fuckedupness of his life and the unfair choices he is presented with. He doesn’t tell Betty about the time FP got drunker and drunker, and meaner and meaner, and Jughead ended up with a black eye, and on Toni’s doorstep. Under his arm was a rolled up sleeping bag, on his shoulders sat the camping backpack with all his earthly possessions.

Toni’s mom is always tired from working and dealing with her own kids, but she receives Jughead with open arms and a bowl of soup, and she doesn’t allow any talk of him moving out.

“Where would you go? Where four people eat, you can fit one more.”

(Mrs Topaz’ kids, in order: Trevor(19), studying Law at Vermont University but still crashing home every weekend, Toni(17) bisexual punk wonder, and Thiago(9) who wants to be Spider Man when he grows up.)

Mrs Topaz, who grew up in Brazil before coming to America to build her life in the Southside, imposes rules on Jughead like he’s another one of her kids. His grades get better. He doesn’t ask about the tall and broad dark man in the pictures scattered around the house, and he doesn’t ask why no one ever sits at the top of the table at dinner.

(One day, after Major Trash’s rehearsal, while they’re walking home in the dark, Toni says:

“Next weekend can you stay with one of your friends? We’re going to see my dad in the big house.”

He’s too ashamed to ask anyone else, and that is the first night he spends on the projection room of the drive-in.)

Jughead builds his routines again, starts to feel like his life is grounded and he can’t believe how much he missed it, how tired he was of always questioning where his next meal was coming from, or where he was going to sleep, or what version of his father would be waiting for him at home. Now, he helps Thiago with his homework while Toni or Mrs Topaz make dinner, meets with Betty for True Crime Club every wednesday, has band rehearsals on thursdays, sometimes he even spends his fridays playing playstation with Archie again, even if they’ve never talk about feelings, not since that night when it dawned on him that Archie’s life may not be perfect.

Telling Betty about Joaquin may be the thing that brings this routine down, and it may mean that his dad belongs in prison,

(He starts to remember other things, like the respectful nods that his dad used to get on the street, and the shouting matches his parents used to have, with his mother screaming that she will not let her baby grow up in that life.)

(Only one baby.)

But Jughead still tells Betty. At this point, finding out what happened to Jason Blossom has become an obsession for them both, and not even under torture would Jughead admit that it’s as much about finding a murder as it is about spending more time with Betty.

(he fills pages upon pages of minutia, clues, conclusions, facts and observations.

The last time anyone saw Jason, and how Betty’s hair shines like spun gold.)

They hit a roadblock, and reach a conclusion that feels inevitable.

“If they were at that party, they were involved in some weird stuff and my sister knows about it. Jughead, we need to go get Polly.”

There’s nothing that Jughead wouldn’t do for Betty Cooper, and at this point, Toni’s affection for the preppy blonde is almost as deep as his own. That’s why he manages to borrow her truck, with promises to be back on time to pick Thiago from school and drive him to karaté class and then getting Mrs Topaz from her night shift at the hospital. Jughead still only has learner’s permit, but with kids getting murdered and Betty’s sister is being kept in some sort of mid-century insane asylum, there are more important things than road security laws.

It’s a mark of the urgency of the situation Betty, who has always been a law abiding citizen and even feels a twinge of guilt about jaywalking, still gets in the car with Jughead without even discussing it further, just a smile and a bounce of her ponytail as she slides to the seat beside him.

The drive up north is beautiful, there is a stillness to the snow roads even as the sun is shining through the pine trees that take the place of the Riverdale maple forests. For the past few days, while they were struggling to find out where exactly was Polly, Betty has had a nervous, bubbling energy. She cried on rehearsal when Toni shared some lyrics for an original she was excited to be working on, but Betty had rubbed the tears out of her eyes by the time they hit the chorus again and Toni screamed out the rest of her song.

( _That’s the deal with being a girl_

_People keep promising you the world_

_As long as they can shut you up_

_You can’t make me grow up_ )

But now that they are doing something, actually moving instead of just standing still and speculating, Betty seems calm and collected. She smiles at Jughead from the passenger seat, and the cold winter sun behind her makes her face look so beautiful, it breaks his heart.

Toni’s truck still has a cassette player, and bless her heart, she has Sex Pistols and The Ramones, music from their childhood, that Betty and Jughead sing along to while he drives and she watches him. There’s something about a boy driving, his left arm on the wheel and the right one relaxed between them, he keeps his hand on the shift but for a moment she thinks, “what if he were to put his hand on my knee right now?” and the heat of want is so strong that leaves her breathless for a moment, and he laughs because he thinks she forgot the lyrics to “Sheena is a Punk Rocker”. Betty’s wearing her good luck skirt today, the one with buttons down the front, that makes her waist look tiny and makes her feel strong and powerful. She thinks about his big hands on her tights-covered thighs. She takes a moment to think about him moving his hand up, just a moment and no longer.

Betty Cooper is not in the habit of letting herself enjoy good things. She eats three fries and then stops. She only listens to music on headphones. So, she only takes a moment to enjoy the sun in her face and looking at the boy beside her, his crooked nose, his grey eyes focused on the road, the mole on his cheek and the curls escaping from his beanie. She thinks about asking him to stop the truck, leaning over him, kissing him. She allows herself to daydream about climbing over to the driver’s seat, one leg on each side of him while she grabs his face and kisses him slowly, with his hands grabbing her waist so tight because he wouldn’t want to lose her. Jughead grins a loopsided sideways grin when he feels her eyes on him, and she is breathless and thinks, “he would let me do that, he would let me kiss him”. He fidgets under her attention,

“What are you looking at, Betty spaghetti?”

It’s the same thing Archie and him used to call her when they were little, to tease her, and that feels as cold water over her, breaking her nice fantasy that she’s just a girl cutting school to drive away with a boy she thinks is cute, to do stupid shit together.

She’s so dumb. Why would he even like her, like that? She’s Betty fucking spaghetti.

“Looking at you, bighead.” She looks through the window to avoid his eyes, and changes the subject to something safer, like the endless argument over what songs they should play at the Battle of the Bands.

When conversations dries up, they drive the rest of the way in comfortable silence, but the closer they get to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, the more restless Betty feels. It’s irrational, but she’s afraid that they’ll lock her in with her sister, that the nuns will take one look at her and know all about the scars in her hands, and the calories she counts, and the times she feels like someone else is taking over her bones.

They stop the car, and she feels just about to scream, or throw up, or start crying, as she looks at the big victorian building. It’s so ridiculously creepy, like a haunted house in a horror movie that you scoff at because you think that no one with half a brain would ever choose to enter such a place.

But Polly didn’t get a choice.

Jughead takes her hand, and it’s only then she realizes that she was shaking. He pulls on her hand till she is forced to look him in the eyes. He has beautiful eyes, gray and calm, with very nice attractive eyebrows that she can’t help but notice in her effort to disconnect herself from this place, from this situation. He says softly,

“Hey, partner, we’ll go into this together, okay. I’ll be right by your side the whole time.”

She nods, and they go inside to meet her sister.

Everything goes to shit right after that. Polly, pregnant, her mother, screaming, Jughead, not by her side as promised. Betty has too much rage in her to be heartbroken, though, when she finally gets home, she screams some truths at her mother, truths like:

“This was not your decision to make!”, and “You can’t keep me away from Polly, mom, this is your fault, your responsibility and your mess and you need to clean this shit up.”

When her mother points out her language, Betty bites her tongue to keep herself from telling her to fuck off.

She should’ve trusted Jughead to keep his promises.

Later, he stumbles onto her bedroom, and she half snorts and half laughs, and clasps a hand on her mouth to keep quiet.

“What are you doing here?” she whispers to him. “My mom will die if she catches you. Actually, she may kill you first.”

“Like she did with Jason?” he whispers back, and then he says, “I said I would help you, Betty.”

She is serious but smiling because everything is actually awful in their lives, “Don’t even joke about my mom killing him, please. I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

He’s standing awkwardly by the window, but her mind is moving too fast for her to be able to keep still, so she paces around the room and her mouth moves too fast for her to keep up, making connections, planning a course of action. She is trying desperately to do what Betty Cooper does best, take control of an uncontrollable situation.

That’s when he strides towards her, clear intent written on the lines of his body, and in one fluid motion he is grabbing her face and kissing her, deeply, and her mind is suddenly quiet. Blissfully quiet. The kiss is no more than a declaration, a harsh pressing of lips against her own, but it feels like being wanted. He wanted her so badly that he just couldn’t wait to grab her like this, and that is the thing that settles in her belly, like a coiled snake in the center of her. When they break apart, she says,

“We need to get that car.”

Because as soon as he let go, thoughts came rushing back and her mind is clear and useful and sharp.

They call Tony to warn her to pick up Thiago from karaté, and then they go find Jason Blossom’s car, and the drugs inside don’t surprise them at all, instead just further pull the fuzzy picture into focus. They call the sheriff, but when they come back later that night with the police, Jason Blossom’s car is a bonfire on the highway.

Jughead grabs Betty’s hand, and they watch it burn, together.

* * *

 

There are a lot of versions to this story.

Every version comes from different choices that the people in it make, a million Riverdales, and not one more correct than other. There is a version where they stay children forever, where Betty and Veronica always fight over Archie, and the days are always sunny. There is one where Jughead wears a crown because he used to be a king, fat and mighty, until he isn’t one anymore. There are universes where they never found punk, and Betty’s hands get even more crescent stars, and Polly is a secret buried away, and even more realities where Jason never died, and was forced to face his destiny as a Blossom.

There are others where, instead of party drugs with ridiculous names, heroin arrives at Riverdale like it does at so many small Vermont towns, and it destroys everything in its wake.

In some futures, Jughead and Betty find out who killed Jason Blossom, and instead of setting them free, the revelation instead brings them further into the misery and darkness that is as much a part of Riverdale as the Sweetwater river.

In that version of this story, Archie watches his dad die in front of his eyes, in the very same place where they got burgers, and milkshakes, and where he had his first kiss.

Fact: Fred Andrews oversleeps on the day another version of him is killed.

Fact: Forsythe Pendleton Jones calls his son at 3:33 AM the day Jason Blossom’s car burns down. He is crying. He wants to confess to something. He wants to make amends.

He wants his son to come back home.

Like all children of terrible parents, Jughead feels like he’s been waiting to hear these words all his life.

(the forgiveness wells up in him even before he picks his phone up in the darkness, trying to be quiet so Toni doesn’t wake up)

He says, “Yeah dad, I need to talk to you too.” pause. Heartbeat. “I know you didn’t mean it.” pause. Heartbeat heartbeat. “We’ll help you out dad, don’t worry.”

Heartbeat.

“I love you too.”

In the morning, Jughead Jones walks into the trailer park he sort of calls his home, and finds his dad on the couch, dead. The bullet hole in his forehead looks tidy, clean. His eyes are open, bloodshot.

Jughead stumbles outside, empties the contents of his stomach on the patches of weeds, and makes three calls in quick succession:

First, to the police.

(they find the gun that killed Jason Blossom in the trailer, and drugs, and Serpent gear, and they close the case with one tidy bow that makes Jughead Jones the son of a murderer drug dealer.)

(they don’t find a tape that shows Clifford Blossom killing his own son in the basement of the same dive bar Joaquin Martinez works at.)

Second, he calls Toni Topaz.

(he doesn’t cry, and she doesn’t bother asking if he is okay, instead she in turn calls her mother, who handles funeral arrangements with the same practicality that helps her put food on the table.)

(quietly, with no fuss, Mrs Topaz calls Child Protective Services and explains that this teenager at risk has been staying in her house and it would be better if this would become an official foster situation. With more to worry about than a sixteen(16) years old muderer’s son, Child Services say, sure lady, go ahead if you want him that bad. No one else seems to.)

Only after that, when he can already hear the sirens, does he place his third call, to Betty Cooper.

(“Betty, he didn’t do it. I know he didn’t.”

“I believe you.”

“We’ll never be able to find out who did, we’ll never… Betty, fuck… Betty.”

Only then does Jughead Jones cry.)


	5. When Teen Girls Get Murderous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a body is buried, they are all teenagers for once, Betty goes exploring, and Archie loves his friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is! This chapter took a lot of work and tinkering, so thank you for being patient. I'm so so thankful for your comments and feedback. Thank you for reading this weird little fanfic and for putting up with my experimenting with these characters.
> 
> Please note that this chapter deals with issues of self-hurt, grief, and death, in a canon-typical way but still, please take care of yourself.
> 
> The Betty Cooper and Toni Topaz [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/11101303548/playlist/3FsqWln7GKyrOAj2IJ6DhX), Girls Invented Punk, is always being updated on my Spotify.  
> You can also see the [moodboard](http://fuckingskywalkers.tumblr.com/post/167664660564/teenage-dirtbags-the-punk-rock-au-betty-cooper) I did for Betty over at my Tumblr, where you can always go to say hi!

“Hey, mom. It’s weird that this went straight into voicemail, but I really need to talk to you. Fuck, how do I say this… Dad is dead. They’re saying it was a suicide but… It doesn’t matter, I guess. If you want to come up, the funeral is in two days. This is Jughead, by the way. Okay, bye.”

 

“Hey, mom. Sorry to call you again, but I’m starting to freak out that you’re not picking up the phone… Please come back to me as soon as you can, please. I’m… There are all these things about life insurance and who owns the trailer and cremation and the police… I really need some help. Please. This is-”

 

“Okay, mom, are you ignoring me? Or did you die too? Do you have any idea how freaked out I am? Please just pick up the phone, just tell me if you and Bean are okay that is literally all I think about and my life is fucking falling apart mom, please. Just… This is Jughead. Call me back.”

 

“Dad’s funeral is tomorrow. If you want the trailer, call the police. Toni’s mom… Oh, I forgot, you have no idea who Toni is, because you don’t know shit about my life, mom. I don’t even know… Fuck this. Toni is adopting me, I guess, so fuck you very much. You think you’re so much better than him, but-”

 

“This is Jughead. Tell Jellybean I love her and I’m getting her as soon as I turn eighteen. That’s a fucking promise.”

* * *

 

The most impressive thing about grief, insurmountable, life-changing grief, is the way it just... goes on. Life has no consideration for what you’re going through. The sun rises, and Jughead keeps on living. 

He texts Archie to let him know, and receives a string of texts back, escalating in emotional tone and offers of support, all things he can’t deal with it because his father being dead made his thoughts all muffled, like he’s under water.

He falls asleep on the futon, and his father is dead. 

He wakes up in Toni’s bed, because she heard his nightmares and pulled him up from the floor to lie next to her. The morning light is cold and white on the cramped bedroom, Tupac looks over them, THUG LIFE in his abs like a warning, and Jughead’s father is dead. 

He eats the cereal that Mrs Topaz fixes for them, says thank you, brushes his teeth, and his father is dead, so he doesn’t go to school, but he doesn’t know what he is supposed to do with himself either.

His father is dead, and so there is a body to deal with, but police tell him to wait for it to be released after the autopsy. There’s a funeral to take care of, but Mrs Topaz already spent hours finding out where FP kept money they could use, and then a small bald man had shown up, shaken Jughead’s hand and given his condolences, and assured him that everything would be taken care of. Behind closed doors, he hears Mrs Topaz ask for a pine casket since this is the cheapest option, and that is a box where his father will go.

Police still have his dad’s phone, and Jughead has no idea how or who to contact. Who will show up for Forsythe Jones, the second?

Toni stays home with him, even though the look Mrs Topaz gives her daughter is one that says “this boy’s tragedy is not an excuse for you to miss any more school”.

Having someone feeding him, clothing him, and worrying about his school attendance, is something that Jughead will never stop being thankful for. 

Without school, he and Toni stay in their pajamas, do their homework on the kitchen table, and then sit side by side on the couch, Jughead with his laptop open in his lap. Ever since he started to read, he started to write. Not all of it was good, but it was always there. Stories about detectives and femme fatales, a stupid fantasy phase where he wrote a lot about dragons, really bad poetry… He just threw himself at words, not minding if he was good at it, but doing it for the sheer pleasure of using words, making them do his bidding, blackening empty pages.

Now he stares at the blinking cursor, his father is dead, and there are no words in him. He feels empty and afraid, through all the shouting matches his parents had, through his mother leaving, through changing houses and changing schools and changing friends and changing body, through it all he had words. What if they are gone forever?

He stares at the screen until his eyes start to prickle and his breathing speeds up. Suddenly, he is sure what he is feeling is a heart attack. His left arm feels numb and his brain is a pressure storm behind his eyes. Oh god, he’s going to die too. He’s dying right now.

Toni’s hand is on his shoulder.

“Hey,” she says softly and he doesn’t look at her, he keeps stubbornly looking at the blank page because he knows that if he looks at her, he’ll see concern and sorrow and pity and he knows she doesn’t mean it like that but god he doesn’t want to see it he doesn’t want-- “Hey, hey, Jughead, call blondie. Let’s go do something dumb. We’re teenagers, for fucks sake!”

So he does, he picks up his phone and calls Betty, even though his voice sounds weird and fake-okay, just so that he has something to do. It’s kind of awkward, and stilted, but he breathes through it and is now 90% sure that he will not die soon. He wants to ask, is it okay that I kissed you? Did you like it? But then he remembers that his dad is dead and it would be stupid to worry about kissing girls at a time like this. He should be busy grieving. Instead he says, “Toni says teenagers loiter and we should do teenager shit.”

And Betty has a lot of really sound arguments on why they really shouldn’t, like the fact that she has classes, and they do too, and there are papers to write or books to read, and it’s freezing outside, but in the end she sighs and laughs and says, sure, I’ll skip second period and go loiter.

Jughead knows she only said yes because his dad is dead.

(He wants to scream, IS IT OKAY THAT I KISSED YOU?)

But he hasn’t showered since yesterday, 

(since he found his dad’s body)

He really doesn’t want to, but Toni creases her nose and shoves him into bathroom. He stands under the water spray for the 15 minutes they have hot water, and then stays there even as it turns cold over his scalp. The water washes away the sour smell of his fear, and he does feel better when he steps out and has clean clothes waiting for him, smelling of the blueberry fabric softener that Mrs Topaz uses. When he puts on his beanie, he feels like a person again, if not really a king.

In a mission to do “shit that teenagers do”, they go through Toni’s older brother’s stuff until they find a tiny plastic ziplock bag with a dime of weed inside. Toni steals it with no shame, saying that she’s saving her brother from a life of crime, but when Jughead asks, hesitantly and feeling painfully uncool, if she has smoked before, Toni laughs and says “no way, but how hard can it be?”

After all, his dad is dead. 

They pick up Betty outside the Trader Joe’s, where she immediately blurts out,

“I don’t know if this is a good place to loiter, my mom shops here.”

It’s actually really fucking cold, snow is packed on the side of the road, and none of them have actually seen teenagers hanging out outside convenience stores other than in movies set in California. So instead end up going to the drive-in, where no movie is showing because Veronica’s dad (who is alive) is going to tear this place apart. They drive in uncomfortable silence, and Jughead stares outside the window and lets his father’s death just weigh the air between them. They eventually park and set up figuring out how to actually roll a joint.

Betty says, half-heartedly,

“I don’t know if we should smoke weed before our brains are fully developed.”

“If we wait for Toni’s brain we’ll be waiting forever”, Jughead says. They break out laughing, and things can’t be that bad if they still laugh their asses off. Toni punches him in the shoulder, and Betty’s laughter is like a bird in flight.

Toni ruins one rolling paper, then another, and her nimble brown fingers are actually terrible at this. Always industrious, Betty opens an anonymous tab on her phone to look for weed rolling tutorials, and they end up watching a Seth Rogen tutorial video, transfixed. Of course that Betty is the one who actually rolls something that looks like they could smoke it, and now Jughead says,

“Not to get peerpressury Betty, but you should light it.”

“I’m not sure-” Betty starts, but Toni interrupts saying “Girl, it’s legal now, come on. We can’t be punks if we don’t do at least a little bit of drugs. We’ll stop before we get to heroin.”

Betty laughs, lights the blunt and coughs her lungs at first, but soon enough they get the hang of it. They have a Ramones tape going, since they are getting dumber by the puff, and Toni keeps saying that she doesn’t feel anything happening until half an hour passes and they are a giggling, red-eyed mess. They sing along to the tape until Betty says,

“I’m fucking starving.”

And so Toni opens all the windows in the truck and they drive painfully slowly to Pop’s. Toni is about an inch away from the steering wheel and muttering under her breath about the police. Jughead’s brain feels pleasantly muted, and he taps his fingers to the beat and watches on the rearview mirror to see Betty lying on the back seat with her foot on the windowsill,

“Wait, guys, is it still a windowsill if we are in a car?” Betty asks, making Jughead giggle despite himself and twist to look at her fully.

She’s wearing a short skirt and thick woolen tights, and a pink sweater under the parka she didn’t bother taking off. Her left arm is folded under her head and she’s smiling absentmindedly at the car ceiling (“So, it’s definitely a ceiling and a windowsill even if it’s a car, right?”, Betty asks). Jughead has never seen anything so lovely in his whole life as the long line of her legs. She turns to look at him with a slow, soft smile.

“What are you looking at?”

“Looking at you, Bets. You’re lovely.” He says, because it’s true, and it’s good to say true things, especially when she blushes a lovely pink color that is brighter than her shirt. He wants to kiss her, he wants to go to the back seat and find the space to lie next to her and maybe ask her to pet his hair and just hold him for a bit.

“Fucking white people in love,” Toni mumbles angrily, still hyper focused as she parks in front of Pop’s. It’s Jughead’s time to blush and tear his eyes away from Betty, but he notices that she looks pleased. He saves that knowledge in a warm place inside himself.

It’s only when they stumble into Pop’s, laughing at Toni’s THC paranoia, that the man behind the counter looks at him with pity, and Jughead remembers again: his father is dead. Pop nods at him solemnly but Toni drags them to a booth before anything else can be said. Betty settles next to Jughead, closer than she needs to be, and the strawberry scent of her shampoo makes him feel more human.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Jughead”, Pop says when he brings them burgers, friend and milkshakes, and Jughead manages to squeak out a thanks. He feels like a child. He feels like a little shit for having forgotten that his father is still dead, if only for a moment. He’s still high, so the feeling is unpleasantly sharp. He begins to think of how many people in here know his father is dead, how many saw him laughing, what are they thinking, he shouldn’t even care what they are thinking, that’s not even punk, but what if they think he didn’t love his dad? He’s not sure he did, but What If They Don’t, the tightening feeling is back along with the numbness in his left arm, Archie had an aunt who had a series of small heart attacks and no one even noticed until her brain was already affected and maybe that’s why he couldn’t write earlier, maybe his brain is already gone and...

Betty takes his hand under the table.

Jughead draws a shaky, deep breath, and then another. Plastered along his side, he feels Betty matching him, breath for breath, and he focus on that until he feels better. His hand is clammy with panic, but she doesn’t let go. 

Toni tackles the food and talks only in grunts, so Jughead takes a burger and starts to eat. Nothing ever tasted as good his entire life, and he groans around his burger, a very embarrassing noise that he couldn’t control. He lets go of Betty to grab his food with both hands, even though holding hands with Betty is brilliant, this burger is his new master. He sneaks a glance at her and she has a blush high on her cheeks, he catches her staring at his mouth, and he worries that he has gotten ketchup all over himself. Betty clears her throat and looks away like she was caught shoplifting, but then she wraps her pink lips around her milkshake straw and gives a strong pull and Jughead’s turn to look away, he can’t keep watching her. 

“Guys… Milkshake is so good. Why would you ever avoid drinking it?” Betty says dreamily.

“Lactose intolerance,” Toni says, and for some reason that breaks the tension and they’re cracking up again. They are still laughing when Cheryl’s red presence parks next to their table.

“What’s so funny guys? Is it that your father murdered my brother?” Cheryl lipstick is impeccable and red, her arms are crossed across her chest, and she looks perfect. The sort of girl high schoolers can only dream of jerking off to.

Jughead wonders if it’s always like this for her. If everything she does, there’s a voice reminding herself, Jason is dead.

“Move along, red” Toni warns between a mouthful of burger.

“Were you actually holding hands with a murderer underneath the table, Cooper?” Cheryl ignores Toni and keeps talking, “Cute. He’ll fit right in with your trash family. Are you planning on getting pregnant already or is that just what you Cooper girls do when the boyfriend is rich?”

Betty, bless her heart, very deliberately puts her burger down and grabs at his hand again, even though it’s all greasy and gross, and she puts their joined gross hands right on the table and juts her chin out, like she does when she is trying to feel brave. Jughead knows her so well that it tears him apart.

“Leave us alone, Cheryl.” Betty says.

“Why? His dad killed Jason. You’re sitting with a killer, Betty, and you’re obviously on something if you think that holding hands is some sort of brilliant statement, and you--”

“Cheryl,” Jughead finally looks up from his hand, now taken over by Betty Cooper, “I’m sorry.”

“What?” She was ready for a big tirade, and he threw her off, but he can see the comeback on the way. She’s quick, Cheryl is. She doesn’t get enough credit for it.

“I’m sorry.” Jughead says, “It sucks. My dad is dead and we’re all fucked up, and it fucking sucks. I mean, we’re in High School and you have a color scheme, Cheryl. You live in a mansion that could show up in a horror movie. If you told me you have a deranged sister you guys keep locked up in the attic, it wouldn’t even be in the top five weirdest things about that house. You and your family clearly all dye your hair, and your brother is dead and he’s never coming back no matter how mean you are or how hot you look or how good at cheerleading you get. He’s just gone and you’ll never see him again and you’ll never scream at him or tell him not to drink and to fucking pay the bills and grow up and be there for you. He’ll never be there for you, at all. It really fucking sucks, and I’m so sorry.”

Her mouth hangs open, a big red O. She looks stunned and her eyes are shiny with tears, and around the table Betty is stuck between laughter and tears, and Toni is just looking at him, serious like he’s never seen her.

“Fuck you Jughead.” Cheryl says.

“Yeah, I understand that.”

She turns her back on them swiftly and they hear the bells jingle and the door slamming when she leaves. Toni is back attacking her food like it personally offended her, and Betty is sniggering, barely contained, even though Jughead meant all of those words, and he says so.

It’s worth it because Betty kisses him on the cheek and says, “I know you meant it, it was still funny. And sad.” She doesn’t let go of his hand, even though it’s awkward to eat like this, but they manage. It registers with Jughead, belatedly, that this is the first time in a very long time, probably since before puberty hit them, that he has seen Betty finish all her food.

Jughead’s dad is still dead when they leave Pop’s at sunset. Toni has to go pick Alysha up from beauty school so they can make out in the truck for one hour till it’s time to get Thiago from karaté. Jughead says, I’ll walk you home Betty. She shivers in the early setting sun, so he puts his denim jacket around her shoulders. It smells like him and Betty feels like she’s in a movie, probably The Breakfast Club, and Jughead is Judd Nelson. They walk holding hands the whole way, discussing possible setlists and talking about suicide cults, and they don’t mention what happened to Jason Blossom once, even though they both know that this is an unsatisfying and fake (poser) ending to his death.

When they’re at Betty’s doorstep there is a moment of hesitation. The sun is pink and violet, painting Betty in vivid neon pastels. She looks up at him and her eyes look huge, her lips are half parted and she’s still smiling at his terrible joke about the Blossom’s starting a cult where everything had to be red and maple-leaf themed. Betty says,

“Isn’t that just called Canada?”

And that’s too much for him. He doesn’t give himself permission to think too much about it, or he’ll lose his courage. His hand goes to the back of her neck and he pulls her towards him, and kisses her. It scares him, how easy it is. It seems to him that it should be harder for a guy like him, someone broken and terrible who does and says bad things to people he loves, to do something as inherently good as kissing Betty Cooper. Still, she parts her lips for him, and he can feel her smile as he deepens the kiss. She tastes a bit like bitter smoke, and a lot like strawberry milkshake. She steps closer to him, her leg between his, so that there is no distance between them. His other hand goes to her waist, under his jacket, and he can’t believe he’s kissing her again, like this is just another part of his life.

Eventually, Betty steps back, breathless and dazed. She’s looking at him hungry. It occurs to him something that he had previously only theoretically gleaned from novels: this girl wants him as much as he wants her.

“I’m sorry,” he still says, “I keep thinking I’m going to die, and if I did it without kissing you again I would be even a bigger idiot than what I already am.”

“Jughead Jones,” Betty says, serious as murder, “You can kiss me whenever you like.”

His dad is dead, Jughead knows, but it’s going to be okay. 

* * *

 

Texts from Archie are waiting for Betty as soon as she gets home:

_ were you with jughead? _

_ is he ok? _

_ when is the funeral?  _

_ should i go? did he say anything about me? _

_ do you think i should take ronnie? _

_ ur right, i shouldn’t _

_ i shouldn’t right? _

There was a time in Betty’s life when these many texts from Archie Andrews would make her stomach flutter and her fingers nervously hover over her phone, searching for the right words. Just a few weeks ago it would have been painful to read about Veronica, and how Archie wants to take her everywhere and show her off, this headstrong girl that is everything that Betty is not. She fills a glass with cold cold water, and extra ice cubes, and drinks the rest of her cottonmouth away, considering the particular feeling of knowing she should care, but really not wanting to. 

There was a time when she would drag herself over to the boy next door and listen endlessly to him talking about other girl, and tell herself that she’s happy like this, that she’s perfectly fine, thank you very much for asking.

She is just so tired of that bullshit. When she presses the green button to call Archie there is a moment of guilt, of “I could just go over there, he needs a friend, poor Archie”, but then there is the uncharitable voice saying fuck Archie Andrews.

“Hey Archie.”

“Betty! Where were you? I didn’t see you at school today! Are you okay? Is Jughead okay?” Archie sounds stressed out and nice, and she feels guilty again even as she lets herself fall on the couch, with the phone attached to her ear, reassuring Archie that she’s fine, and Jughead is fine, they’re all fine, given the circumstances. 

Betty is pretty sure that the house is empty other than herself, or else she wouldn’t seat this freely, members splayed everywhere and her feet on her mom’s tasteful geometric patterned pillows. Archie is saying something she didn’t hear, “Hm?”

“Betty, do you want me to come over?” he repeats.

“No, Arch, I’m just tired. The funeral is tomorrow, if the town doesn’t catch fire till then. The police ruled it a suicide, so they released the body pretty quickly.”

“You don’t think it was a suicide?” Archie asks, his voice so distant that it sounds like he’s in another planet.

It’s not like she’s a bad liar, she’s actually a scarily good one. You need to know how to lie if you keep two diaries and lead a double life where, on one hand, you are Betty Cooper, and on the other hand, you smoke weed and kiss a boy named Jughead. There is something wild and new in her, so she doesn’t lie, “No, I don’t think so, Archie. And I don’t think he killed Jason Blossom either.”

There is a pause on the other side. Betty kicks her boots off, remembering that her mom will freak out if she sees even a suggestion of dirt in the couch. All things in the Cooper house are to be kept immaculate and pristine, from the furniture to the girls. 

“Are you sure about that, Betty?” Archie hesitates “He was a real piece of shit when he was alive. My dad let him go because he was running with the Serpents, he was drinking at the job and there was money missing from the register.”

Archie is a good person, he sees the world in black and white and Betty used to be like that too, but she can’t, not when her parents tried to hide her sister away, not when Jason Blossom is dead and everyone is happy just sweeping it under the rug. She wants to laugh, but she doesn’t, “Does it matter now, Archie? His dad is dead, and the funeral is tomorrow. You either go, or you don’t.”

There is another long pause, “Do you think Jughead would want me there?”

Sometimes Betty thinks she’s over Archie, she’ll never moon over him again, and she’ll never look at his jaw and consider kissing him there, just once, and she’ll never think about how nice and dumb he is and find herself getting emotional over it. He is so sweet, so sweet and bland and everything she could ever want, that even now, looking at her stained socks on the couch, her lips tingling from being kissed, listening to his little boy voice, she can’t help but love him. 

“Are you, or are you not, the same Archie Andrews who once wrote such hit songs as ‘Everything will work out’ and ‘I love my friends’?” Betty finally asks.

“Betty, you promised we would never talk about that again.” Archie says and she can just see him getting as red as his hair.

“I’m not saying it to make fun of you, Archie. It’s just... your best friend, our best friend, is out there and he is not okay. We haven’t been the best for him, lately. We have actually been pretty shitty,” she pauses “But here is a chance to show up for him again, and I know… I love you guys so much, both of you, and I know that if anyone is going to make it all work out, it’s you, Archie. I have complete faith in you.”

There is a long silence during which Betty lets her eyelids grow heavy and just listens to his breathing.

“Wow, Betty, that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“We’ll both be there tomorrow, okay? I’ll be with you, we’ll be by his side and we won’t let anyone fuck with Jughead again.”

Archie’s laugh is crackly from the bad sound quality.

* * *

 

Imagine, if you will, that you are Alice Cooper. You are ruthless in the pursuit of the truth, or at least, of what you consider to be the truth that needs to be told. You are the personification of that Drake song you always sing along to when you’re alone in the car: you started from the bottom, and God knows you stepped on a few people, and you made a few mistakes along the way, but now you’re here. You got the house, and the husband, and the two blonde perfect girls that you first dreamed into existence when you were growing up in that grimmy trailer park on the other side of town.

Imagine your perfect house, with the small lawn, the farmhouse kitchen that you hate cooking in, and maybe the faucets are a bit old fashioned, and the girls’ bedrooms need a remodelling, but it’s your house 

(your useless husband’s name is on the deed, but it’s your fucking house).

Picture how much you have given up to get here. Your roots, bleached and forgotten. The days fighting and scrapping. Two jobs to get yourself through college, and then continuing working through the pregnancy you weren’t ready for. Thinking about the boy left behind to rot in that same trailer park life you managed to escape.

Through it all, when your mortgage payments keep you up at night, or when you look at your 

(perfect, blonde)

Children in their dance recitals and you can only see the flaws in them and you know that is not normal but you can’t stop pointing it out, when your job takes you inside the darkness at the heart of this town, when you are consumed by petty high-school rivalries with the rich kids that you still feel inferior to…

Through it all, you think about FP Jones and his toe-curling smirk, and you think, “it could be worse than this”.

The day you hear about his death is the day you get home and the one child you have left with no cracks

(perfect, smooth and blonde, that’s your Betty, and you know you shouldn’t do it but you’ve started to think of Betty as an only child, like Polly never happened)

Is sprawled on your couch, asleep, smelling of smoke and wearing a boy’s jean jacket.

(and you know this jacket doesn’t belong to cute, safe Archie Andrews)

If you’re Alice Cooper, you want to let your child sleep, but there is that voice inside of you that made you work harder than anyone else and it says, clear as day, this has got to stop right the fuck now.

“Elizabeth Claire Cooper, what do you think you’re doing?” her voice climbs steadily and she watches Betty scramble awake with a dark satisfaction, “Didn’t you have cheerleading practice today?”

“Mr. Jones died, so I was with Jughead. He needs friends right now.” Betty says.

Alice sits by her on the couch, and takes her child’s hands into hers, “Oh sweetie, you have such a good heart, I know you do. But that boy is bad news, just like his father was bad news before him. It’s no surprise he’s dead before he even hit forty and the same thing will happen to your friend.”

She sees the defiance written in Betty’s chin and her eyes, slightly glossed over and with wide pupils, so she continues, “I don’t want you running along with that boy anymore either. His father killed Jason Blossom, god knows what he could do to you--”

“Mom, please, don’t treat me like I’m dumb. You don’t really believe that, do you?” Betty asks and there is something hard and new in her voice, something that Alice does not care for, at all.

“If you insist on acting like you’re a child then yes, I’ll treat you like one. You’re old enough to know that the optics of the situation are as important as the truth of it” Alice raises her hand and softly combs her fingers through Betty’s hair, bringing her nap hair to its familiar tidiness, like she did when they were little girls. Her daughter leans into the touch, just a little bit, and Alice knows that she’ll win this war, “I just want what’s best for you, baby.”

“I know you do, mom.” Betty says.

“So you won’t go to the funeral, right?” Alice asks evenly, reasonably.

It’s like she slapped Betty across the face. Her daughter gets up in a snap, and looks at her wide eyed. For the first time, Alice sees the adult her daughter is growing up to be, and it terrifies her, a bit. The silence between them is deafening and Alice is just waiting for Betty to start screaming or to slam a door, just so that she can say that she’s being unreasonable and dramatic, and shame her into submission.

“I’m going to be very clear, mom. I’m going to the funeral, because Jughead is my friend and he needs me, and I can make my own decisions,” Betty says, “I’m not Polly. I’m not letting you choose what to do with me.”

Betty turns around before Alice can turn this into an argument, and not the statement of intention that it was. She goes upstairs and closes her bedroom door softly, so she can’t be accused of sulking, before putting on her headphones and drowning the silence of this house with the screaming of strong women.

Before she goes to sleep Betty looks at herself in the mirror for a long time. She tries to see herself in the girl that looks back,

(blonde, with no blemishes)

She says to herself: this is me, this is Betty Cooper. She tries to convince herself of this, but it’s like finally wearing glasses after seeing everything blurred for years. Her mother picked the clothes she wears, the bedroom reflected behind her, the length her perfectly straight blonde hair is cut to, the tasteful nude nail polish on the nails she presses against her palm, again and again, till angry red welts form. Her image of herself is changing, the Betty she imagines in her mind is taller, stronger, more confident, she walks with purpose and says what she means. She doesn’t recognize that Betty in the girl looking back. 

She tears off her clothes until she is standing naked, back in front of the mirror, the white expanse of her body before her, uncharted territory. For once she has her music playing from her laptop, on a low volume but still there, her mother could hear it if she wanted.

Betty never looked at herself like this, it always seemed like a dirty (not-good) thing to do. She only ever saw herself in stolen glances while getting dressed. She hated her body before she even understood that it was hers. Now she traces her hands over her thighs, up to the small ridges of her hip bones, over the slight protruding belly she always hated, and she takes her time there, lets her hands rest on the soft swell of her body, fingertips grazing over the mole on her stomach. She used to think that she would never get able to be naked with anyone, she was so ashamed of her body. It wasn’t pretty enough or skinny enough or good enough. She only ever looked at it and saw the failure of existing as a teenage girl. Now she lightly runs her finger tips to her breasts, feeling the weight and warm of them. The girl looking back in the mirror is wide eyed, breathing rapidly, pink lips the same color as her light pink nipples.

Betty finds that she doesn’t look like anyone she knows, not at all.

* * *

 

It doesn’t rain on the day of FP’s funeral. Jughead finds himself irrationally angry at this, thinking that his father deserved a proper funeral, one that is all sound and fury, like the man himself. Instead, a cold winter sun rises over freshly fallen snow. Mrs Topaz leaves a freshly washed and pressed suit laid out on Toni’s bed. It’s from Trevor’s graduation, the older brother’s interview suit, and so it hangs large on Jughead’s skinny frame. He feels most like a child, on the day he’ll bury his dad. 

Mrs Topaz has taken the day off to go with them to the funeral, and when he comes downstairs she hugs him tightly and presses a motherly kiss on his cheek, saying “Don’t worry honey, we’ll be right with you”. She smells like antiseptic and baby powder, Jughead is so thankful that he’s irrationally afraid of crying right then, before it even starts. They leave Thiago at school and then they take the truck to the small chapel where his father’s corpse is. Toni grabs his shoulder and doesn’t let go through the whole ride. 

Jughead is half expecting no one to show up. The police never released his dad’s phone, so he had no way to warn people, and even though the investigation is still officially open on Jason Blossom’s murder, rumours travel fast in Riverdale. From the whispers and the nasty looks he received over these two days, Jughead already knows that being a murderer’s son won’t be fun.

When they pull up to the chapel the first person he sees is Betty, in a plain black dress. By her side is Archie, in a too-tight suit (probably Fred’s), looking as awkward and uncomfortable. Toni says, “oh good, ginger-Ken is here, and Betty!” with heart eyes towards the blonde girl, and Jughead finds himself thankful again, for having friends who stuck by him in the darkest of times.

Then, he sees everyone else.

Leti and Dilton are there, yes, but Joaquin, Leti’s brother, is also standing nearby with his arms crossed. Behind him are dozens of mean strewn about, in leather jackets, smoking and speaking in hushed voices.

His father’s people.

There is a motorcycle line around the chapel, and a lot of bearded, huge men, with Serpent jackets. The thing no one tells you about death is how awkward it is, and the simple idea of having to shake hands with these many people makes a heavy ball of dred settle on Jughead’s stomach. He gets out of the car and is immediately engulfed in a bear hug by Archie. Betty hugs him next, she smells like strawberries and he wishes he could kiss her again. She’s wearing his denim jacket on top of her black dress. Some of the men spot him and start to make way towards him, but when Jughead looks around in a panic, Mrs Topaz stares them down with a look that makes them step back, nod respectfully at him when he passes through them and steps inside.

The coffin is closed, thank God, but Jughead can’t stop thinking, mydadistheremydadistheremydadistheremydadisdead.

His dad was vaguely Irish Catholic, in the sense that he loved to drink and never went to church, and Jughead wonders what Mrs Topaz did for them to allow a suicide to be buried in consecrated ground. After the short service, the walk to the cemetery is mercifully short.  Betty is by his side the whole time, on the left, with her arm looped on his, and Archie on his right, so close that Jughead can smell his aftershave. He feels a strange disconnect from the whole process, looks at the men following slowly behind them and realizes he’s seen most of them before.

They put dirt over his father.

The men go to Jughead in a orderly line, they clap him in the back of they shake his hand. Some of them are crying, even though Jughead finds himself unable to shed a tear. They say things like, “He was so proud of you”, “You were a good son”, “Don’t blame yourself”, all the things his dad never said, and will never say now. Betty stays by his side the whole time, her spine a steel rod, she smiles at the men, and thanks them for coming in a polite voice. She does all the things he can’t do, says all the things he knows he should say. Even with his dad six feet under, in a pine box, Jughead still has so much to be thankful for.

The last one is Joaquin, with Leti by his side. Jughead is still irrationally scared of this boy, but that’s what he is, he’s just a kid a few years older than Jughead himself. He gives Jughead something he knew was coming, but was still dreading to even think about:

His father’s leather jacket, folded, the Serpent patch says “President”. Jughead always wears a crown (even today, with his too big suit), and now here is a chance to be king.

“He’d want you to have this, Jughead. I’m sorry.” Joaquin says, and then he hesitates before continuing, “The guys… We’re having a proper wake later, in the bar, if you want to come by.”

Leti kicks her brother and looks at him with a warning. All the faces around Jughead have turned closed and dark, like it’s shameful and wrong, what Joaquin is saying. No one knew his father better than these men. No will remember him like they do.

“I-- Thank you, Joaquin. Maybe I will.” Jughead says, the first thing he said all afternoon, and Betty is looking wide eyed and betrayed on his right, but he’s not looking at her, he can’t look at her. Joaquin nods solemnly at him, Leti hugs him and says “I’ll see you at school, okay?” and then they are gone.

Archie starts to say, “Jughead, you can’t”, but is interrupted by a sharp kick on his foot, courtesy of Toni Topaz.

One by one, everyone leaves. Archie says he’ll walk Betty home and hugs Mrs Topaz and Toni before they go. Betty says goodbye to him with a soft kiss on his cheek and a hug. She looks at the Serpents jacket he’s holding, whispers softly on his ear:

“Don’t do anything stupid, okay, Jughead?”

Jughead realizes he can’t get in the car. He can’t, he can’t he can’t, his dad just got buried and Jughead can’t be in a space so small, so tight, as Mrs Topaz respectful Honda.

“I got to go” he says, they can’t hear him so he repeats it louder, panicking and ready to run, “Toni, I got to go.”

Mrs Topaz looks ready to argue, but Toni says something to her in portuguese that makes the small woman sigh and get inside the car, starting it up. Toni gets up in his face, grabs him by the lapels of the suit her brother wore on his graduation.

“Are you going to that place?” Toni asks.

“Yes.”

She sighs, “Okay,” she turns around and goes back to the Honda, says something else in portuguese, and then starts walking with purpose, and Jughead follows her. Every step they take he feels better, the cold feels good on his face.

“Jughead, remember what I told you about Tupac?” Toni says eventually, when they are a block away from the bar. He nods and she continues, “Please don’t be caught up in this shit. Your dad is dead, and that is fucked up. But you’re still alive. You’re smart and capable, and I don’t want you to waste it away in prison.”

They stop at the bar’s door and Toni forces him to look at her.

“Promise me, Jughead.”

He puts on his father’s jacket, and opens the door. 

* * *

 

If Jason Blossom’s existence was distilled to his death, Forsythe Pendleton Jones, second of his name, will made in death bigger and better than what he ever was while alive. At this moment, he is still FP, someone who was not a particularly good friend, nor a good father, who always had a good joke but didn’t follow through on anything, who used the idea that the world was against him as both a shield and a justification.

He was not the lovable rascal of his self-image, nor the monster that he was made out to be in the newspapers after his death. Years later, his son portrayed him in a memoir, a whole book where he was given the undeniably male privilege afforded to bad fathers, of being absolved of his wrongdoings and painted as a complicated man. 

“In the Name of the Father” was the book that catapulted Forsythe Jones III into stardom and gave him the Pulitzer, a book that shared more DNA with “In Cold Blood” than most family histories. Its inception was a tape that had been mailed to Jellybean Jones days before the death of her father, for safekeeping, found by Jughead in the middle of a pile of the pile of trash his hoarding estranged mother had left for him to sort through. It was still in a padded envelope, never opened. In the tape, Clifford Blossom was shown slaying his own son.

By the time “In the Name of the Father” was published, Forsythe Jones III was going by his given name, living in New York and caring for his sister. He had already found some notoriety with his first two novels, “Thick as Syrup” and “She Walked in Red”, but nothing that prepared him for the literary celebrity that followed. He had the skill, yes, and the memoir was stylish and poignant and masterful. More than that, he wore his father’s jacket everywhere, he smoked, he took brooding, smoldering pictures in black and white. He was the sort of writer that is interviewed by GQ and Playboy and is described as an  _ enfant terrible _ . A terrible child.

Before the prizes, before the Oscars won by the Cohen Brother’s adaptation of his book, before he realized that he had turned his father into a symbol, there was an interview on The New Yorker, titled “Forsythe Jones takes his father’s shame and runs with it”, excerpted here:

> **_Your book is about your father and his connection with the murder of Jason Blossom, but the thing that resonates the most is how you show your father as his own person, separate from your existence and the upbringing he gave you. Would you say this book an exercise in forgiveness, or in empathy?_ **
> 
> _ It was both, because you can’t forgive someone if you don’t understand where they’re coming from. I don’t know if my father was a good man. I actually don’t believe in good men. We are all just doing the best we can, and sometimes we can’t even do that. I never met my father, until he died, and even though most people lose their father’s later in life, I think this still holds true. You’re just too selfish to see your parents as people. You don’t accept their flaws, you just want them to take care of you, and my father was a failure at that.  _
> 
> _ When I sat down in the places he went to everyday, and I talked to the people who knew him best, I found out who he really was. All the funny stories about him, and the terrible stories about him. My dad didn't kill Jason Blossom, but that didn't make him a saint, and I laid it all out for everyone to see. Please understand, writing this book was me at my most selfish. I dredged out all the mud of the Blossom’s, of people who grew up with me, people I cared about. I laid it all there, and many of them will never forgive me for it. I guess Riverdale is going to show me, if there can be forgiveness for someone who doesn't let the dead rest in peace. _


End file.
